uc 


THE   CANDLE  AND   THE   FLAME 


THE   CANDLE 

AND   THE 

'  FLAME 


POEMS    BT 

GEORGE    STL7ESTER 
VIERECK 


NEW   YORK 

MOFFAT,    YARD  AND   COMPANY 
1912 


COPYRIGHT,  1912,  BY 
MOFFAT,  YARD  AND  COMPANY 

NEW  YORK 

All  Rights  Reserved 
Published,  March,  1912 


THE  QUINN  &  BODEN  CO.  PRESS 
RAHWAY,  N.  J. 


TO 

POPPY 


.T  .  > 


"  We  are  the  Candle,  Love  the  Flame." 

—THE  CANDLE  AND  THE  FLAME 

"  /  am  the  flame,  men's  bodies  are  the  fuel, 
Men's  souls  the  smoke" 

—THE  THREE  SPHINXES 

(From  Nineveh  and  Other  Poems.} 


CONTENTS 


INTRODUCTION 


THE  CANDLE  AND  THE  FLAME   .                 .        .  3 

THE  PARROT        .        .  .       .....  7 

THE  PRISONING  OF  SONG     .....  10 

GERSUIND    .         .         .         .        .        .        .        .  13 

NERO  IN  CAPRI   .         .        .....  16 

A  BALLAD  OF  MONTMARTRE       .   '     ..                 .  19 

A  BALLAD  OF  KING  DAVID         ....  22 

THE  BALLAD  OF  THE  GOLDEN  BOY    .  -25 

THE  CYNIC'S  CREDO    ......  29 

LIFE     .        ........  32 

IRON  PASSION       .....  "       .         •  33 

INHIBITION   ......         .         -  34 

ON  BROADWAY     .......  36 

THE  UNKNOWN  GODDESS     .         .         .         .         .  37 

THE  VIRGIN  SPHINX    .         .         .        .        "i     '  •  39 

THE  NUNS    ......         .         .4° 

QUEEN  LILITH      .....         .         .  41 

2.   SAMUEL,  I.   26         ......  44 

ENIGMA        .        .......  45 

A  LITTLE  MAID  OF  SAPPHO        ....  46 

CHILDREN  OF  LILITH   .                 .        .        .        *  49 

LOVE'S  AFTERMATH      ......  51 

THE  SINGING  VAMPIRE        .         .         .        .  53 

THE  MASTER  KEY       .        .         .        .:        .        -55 

THE  PILGRIM        .         .         .  .         .        .56 

vii 


viii  CONTENTS 

POEMS  FROM  PLAYS  *AGE 
THE  PRINCESS  WITH  THE  GOLDEN  VEIL  (From 

"  The  Vampire") 61 

JOAN'S  FAREWELL  (From  the  German  of  Schiller)  63 
CHANTECLER'S   ODE   TO   THE   SUN     (After  the 

French  of  Rostand)        .         .         .         .  66 

THE  BREEZE  (After  the  French  of  Zama^ois)      .  69 

AVE  TRIUMPHATRIX 

ATTAR  OF  SONG       ....  77 

THE  BURIED  CITY    ....  7^ 

THE  IDOL          .         .         .         .  79 
TRIUMPHATRIX          ....                  .80 

AT  NIGHTFALL 8l 

FINALE 82 

A  NEW  ENGLAND  BALLAD          ....  85 

THE  PLAINT  OF  EVE  .                           ...  93 


MARGINALIA 


101 


INTRODUCTION 


THE  modern  Muse  finds  herself  in  the  same 
position  as  woman :  she  must  divorce  herself 
from  sentimentalism  without  graduating  into  a 
spectacled  and  hyper-cerebral  old  maid.  She  must 
reaffirm  herself  intellectually,  without  sacrificing  her 
sensuous  appeal.  Phryne  is  preferable  to  a  New 
England  spinster,  but  Aspasia  is  more  desirable 
than  Phryne.  The  brain  thirsts  for  ideas,  the  ear 
thirsts  for  music.  Both  must  be  satisfied.  Un 
fortunately  the  seductions  of  sound  in  poetry  often 
distract  attention  from  the  intellectual  content. 
We  are  compelled  to  emphasize  the  ideational 
values  in  our  work  if  the  world  shall  not  relegate 
lyric  verse  to  the  nursery,  a  plaything  for  children 
and  idiots.  The  salvation  of  poetry  depends  on 
the  recognition  of  its  philosophical  message,  just 
as  the  triumph  of  woman  suffrage  will  not  be  ulti 
mately  assured  until  the  world  realizes  that  behind 
the  ivory  of  Aphrodite's  forehead  there  may  be 
hidden  a  brain  that  could  challenge  Darwin  and 
Bismarck.  We  must  rehabilitate  poetry  as  Shaw 
has  rehabilitated  the  drama.  We  must  apply 
Shavian  methods  to  lyric  and  ballad.  I  have  found 
myself  as  a  poet.  To  help  others  to  find  me,  I 
have  added  a  commentary. 


xii  INTRODUCTION 

My  commentary,  in  the  shape  of  marginal 
notes,  will  be  found  in  the  back  of  this  volume. 
Those  who  wish  to  linger  with  me  after  reading 
the  poems  may  turn  to  my  notes  at  their  leisure. 
Far  be  it  from  me  to  discourage  future  commen 
tators  from  independent  investigation.  My  re 
marks  are  suggestive,  not  final.  If  our  palace  of 
song  is  worth  the  rearing,  we  must  build  better 
than  we  know,  because  we  draw  strength  and  mat 
ter  from  our  racial  conscience  and  from  world 
memories  slumbering  unbeknown  of  us  in  the 
caverns  of  our  brain.  But  we  may  give  a  clue 
now  and  then  which  can  direct  the  mind  of  the 
reader  and  perhaps  prevent  critics  yet  unborn 
from  wasting  marvellously  ingenious  devices  upon 
the  erection  of  spurious  pyramids  on  the  base  of 
a  fatal  misprint  or  a  mistaken  assumption. 
Neither  Goethe,  nor  Shakespeare,  it  may  be  urged, 
was  his  own  commentator.  The  resultant  loss, 
however,  was  both  theirs  and  the  world's.  What 
would  we  not  give  to-day  for  an  authentic  key 
to  "  Faust  II  "  or  to  Shakespeare's  "  Sonnets  "? 


II 

THIS,  in  all  likelihood,  will  be  my  last  book 
of  verse.  I  no  longer  worship  Beauty.  Art 
for  art's  sake  seems  a  jest,  literature  only  a  sickly 
mirage  of  life.  My  temperament  is  more  dynamic 
than  aesthetic.  Activity,  as  such,  allures  me. 
Brooklyn  Bridge  seems  to  me  a  far  more  marvellous 
accomplishment  than  the  most  precious  of  sonnets. 
If  I  were  not  Viereck,  I  would  gladly  be  Edison. 


INTRODUCTION  xiii 

I  sometimes  suspect  that  I  would  rather  have 
reared  the  Metropolitan  Building  than  writ 
ten  my  poem  "  Queen  Lilith."  The  spirit  of 
America  has  eaten  into  my  heart.  Wall  Street  is 
more  interesting  to  me  than  Parnassus.  The  pro 
tagonists  of  great  industrial  combinations  impress 
me  more  than  the  Knights  of  King  Arthur's  Table 
or  the  vassals  of  Beowulf.  Yet  we  cannot  extol  the 
Standard  Oil  Company  in  blank  verse  nor  encom 
pass  in  a  series  of  sonnets  the  exploits  of  J.  Pierpont 
Morgan.  Morgan  himself,  so  I  am  told,  was  a 
poet  before  finance  enthralled  him.  Poetry,  being 
the  child  of  tradition,  must  necessarily  lag  behind 
the  times  at  least  by  a  century.  We  must  write  of 
the  new  in  terms  of  the  old,  even  if  our  work  be  sur 
charged  with  novel  ideas,  because  the  new  terms 
have  not  yet  acquired  the  connotative  poetic  values 
which,  like  certain  rare  mosses,  take  decades  for 
their  growth.  The  poet  of  the  year  two  thousand 
will  be  able  to  write  the  poetry  of  to-day.  The 
year  three  thousand  may  see  the  history  of  Rocke 
feller  and  Morgan  embedded  in  heroic  hexameters. 
We  can  press  forward  only  so  far  as  the  limita 
tions  of  lyric  art  and  our  own  limitations  permit. 
Our  accents,  however,  will  ever  wax  in  resonance 
through  the  ages  if  we  dwell  on  those  themes  which 
cannot  grow  stale  while  the  race  draws  breath: 
metaphysical  truths,  elemental  passions,  and  ele 
mental  satieties.  In  this  book  I  pass  from  the 
physics  to  the  metaphysics  of  passion.  Conserva 
tive  though  I  be  in  business  and  politics,  I  shall 
never  be  a  moralist  in  art.  My  work  is  uncon 
ventional  because  conventions  mean  ever  less  to  me 
the  more  I  vibrate  to  the  heart-beats  of  life  itself. 


xiv  INTRODUCTION 

I  find  it  difficult,  for  instance,  to  write  a  play  be 
cause  the  basic  conflicts  of  conventional  drama  have 
ceased  to  interest  me.  My  own  emotions  are  too 
elusive  and  too  complex  to  be  capable  of  expres 
sion  or  understanding  beyond  where  I  have  gone. 
If  I  lived  in  Europe,  if  mine  were  the  freedom  oi 
Wedekind  and  the  audience  that  hails  him  and 
goads  him,  I  might  still  go  on.  But  I  realize  that 
I  am  too  far  ahead  of  the  pageant  of  American 
life  to  go  one  step  further.  I  have  reached  an 
Ultima  Thule.  Seated  by  the  roadside,  I  shall  wait 
for  America  to  catch  up,  dividing  my  time,  per 
chance,  between  love  and  the  ticker. 

America  forces  its  poets  to  deny  poetry  or  leave 
the  country!  Henry  James  chose  exile,  J.  Pier- 
pont  Morgan  diverted  his  imaginative  powers 
into  the  channels  of  high  finance.  Stedman,  at 
tempting  a  compromise,  was  distinctly  minor  both 
as  a  banker  and  as  a  poet.  George  Santayana 
fled  to  the  cloister  of  his  own  mind,  Poe  to  drink, 
Markham  to  book  reviews.  Roosevelt,  the  most 
poetical  personality  of  the  modern  world,  turned 
to  politics,  Whitman  to  sociology,  Moody  to 
melodrama,  Woodberry  and  Van  Dyke  to  the 
schoolroom,  while  the  tentacles  of  the  Standard 
Oil  encircled  the  poet's  soul  of  J.  I.  C.  Clarke. 
Huneker's  muse  abandoned  inspiration  for  criti 
cism.  The  newspaper  swallowed  Bert  Taylor 
and  William  Marion  Reedy,  while  Michael  Mona- 
han  harks  to  seductive  voices  not  Pierian.  But  the 
torch  of  our  lyric  fire  still  burns  and  will  continue 
to  burn  when  it  has  passed  from  my  hands  into 
those  of  a  younger  poet. 


INTRODUCTION 


in 

I  HAVE  no  reason  to  be  ungrateful  to  America. 
Few  poets  have  met  with  more  instant  recog 
nition  than  I.  My  work,  almost  from  the  be 
ginning,  was  discussed  simultaneously  in  the  most 
conservative  periodicals  and  in  the  most  ultra- 
saffron  complexioned  of  journals.  I  have  given 
a  new  lyric  impetus  to  my  country.  I  have  loos 
ened  the  tongue  of  the  young  American  poets.  I 
have  been  told  by  many  of  our  young  singers  that 
the  success  of  Nineveh  encouraged  them  to 
break  the  harassing  chains  of  Puritan  tradition. 
When,  recently,  as  the  first  American  "  Exchange 
Poet  "  I  lectured  at  the  University  of  Berlin,  I 
assured  my  audience  that  we  have  rebels  not  only 
in  politics  but  also  in  poetry.  I  may  safely  say 
that  I  am  one  of  the  leaders  of  the  lyric  insur 
gents  who,  inheriting  the  technique  of  Poe  and 
the  social  conscience  of  Whitman,  have  added  the 
new  note  of  passion. 

When  my  last  volume  of  verse  appeared,  the 
endorsement  of  Europe  was  written  across  its 
pages.  This  endorsement  was  not  repudiated  by 
the  American  critics.  Even  from  the  commercial 
point  of  view,  my  book  was  not  unsuccessful.  I 
am,  perhaps,  the  only  American  poet  whose  book 
of  lyric  verse  made  money  for  himself  and  his 
publishers.  Success,  however,  is  not  without 
penalties.  Only  recently  I  vicariously  overheard 
the  remark  of  a  gifted  young  poet  of  twenty- 
two,  erstwhile  one  of  my  most  enthusiastic  ad 
mirers  :  "  Don't  you  think  Viereck  is  tremendously 
overrated?  "  Perhaps  the  truth  popped  forth  out 


xvi  INTRODUCTION 

of  the  mouth  of  this  lyric  suckling.  Time  alone 
can  judge.  But  at  least  I  have  had  the  unique 
sensation  of  thus  experiencing,  at  twenty-seven, 
what  Ibsen  experienced  at  seventy.  Already  the 
younger  generation  is  knocking  at  the  gate.  Let 
the  doors  be  swung  wide  open !  This  book,  poetic 
youth  of  America,  is  my  parting  gift  to  you. 


IV 


I  AM  not  oblivious  of  the  adverse  criticism 
called  forth  by  my  books.  I  am  keenly  aware 
of  the  enmity  of  the  Puritans.  My  work  neces 
sarily  arouses  the  prurient  New  England  Con 
science.  The  minds  of  certain  critics  dwell  ex 
clusively  on  the  sensuous  aspects  of  my  work,  just 
as  the  eyes  of  Tartuffe  were  riveted  to  certain 
amiable  portions  of  a  lady's  anatomy.  My  poetic 
interpretations  of  other  phases  of  human  existence 
were  absolutely  ignored.  I  freely  admit  that  the 
passional  note  is  sounded  most  insistently  in  my 
verse.  Passion  is  the  prerogative  of  youth.  When 
should  we  be  passionate,  if  not  at  twenty?  The 
erotic  powerfully  appeals  to  me,  but  I  have  never 
made  myself  the  champion  of  the  vulgar.  Sin 
I  respect,  because  it  is  part  of  the  quest  of  the 
human  soul  for  the  ultimate  good;  of  vice,  as  such, 
I  have  a  physical  abhorrence.  The  professional 
voluptuary  of  either  sex  bores  me. 

To  bear  the  aspersions  of  enemies  was  no  diffi 
cult  task.  I  never  replied  to  the  criticism  of  my 
work  on  the  score  of  its  unconventional  quality, 
except  in  one  instance,  when  censure  came  from 


INTRODUCTION  xvii 

a  friend.  Then  I  spoke.  The  following  letter, 
my  answer  to  Richard  Watson  Gilder,  was  printed 
in  the  literary  supplement  of  the  New  York 
Times.  My  attitude  to-day  is  still  the  same  as 
when  I  penned  these  lines — my  aesthetic  Credo: 

"In  the  great  circle  of  human  life,  I  strive 
to  express  every  segment,  whether  purple  or 
golden,  sombre  or  bright.  But  in  each  case  I 
am  concerned  only  with  the  spirit,  the  symbol, 
the  possible  underlying  philosophy.  It  staggers 
me  to  realize  what  interpretation  has  been  given 
to  some  portions  of  my  work,  interpretations  so 
gross  that  they  are  utterly  beyond  my  compre 
hension.  The  two  classes  who  have  most  sinned 
against  me  in  this  respect  are  roues  of  a  pro 
nounced  type  and  professed  Puritans,  men 
against  the  integrity  of  whose  private  lives 
Cato  at  his  severest  could  not  have  breathed  a 
word  of  scandal. 

"  There  are  critics  who  have  discovered  in 
'  Nineveh '  only  an  erotic  (and  possibly  neu 
rotic)  note.  You,  fortunately,  have  found  and 
acknowledged  that  there  are  many  poems  in  the 
book  that  are  inspired  by  ideals  essentially 
spiritual.  But  it  grieves  me  that  you  also 
should  not  have  seen  that  even  where  my  pen 
transcribes  the  sombre  aspects  of  life  there  is  no 
touch  of  anything  that  is  gross  or  foul.  Far  be 
it  from  me  to  exclude  from  the  realm  of  art, 
especially  my  art,  anything,  even  evil.  It  is 
only  vulgarity  that  I  would  banish  from  the  do 
main  of  letters,  not  necessarily  the  description 
of  vulgarity,  but  vulgarity  in  the  description. 


xviii  INTRODUCTION 

"  I  must  go  my  way,  even  as  you  have  gone 
your  way,  even  as  Poe  and  Whitman,  Long 
fellow,  Whittier  and  Baudelaire.  We  are  all 
instruments  in  the  hands  of  the  Unknown  God 
who  directs  our  activities  toward  some  hidden 
and  wonderful  end.  I  love  beauty  as  you  love 
it,  albeit  I  may  realize  it  in  ways  essentially  dif 
ferent  from  yours.  But  there  is  unity  in  all  God- 
ward  endeavour,  and  grossness  or  vulgarity, 
which  has  no  place  in  your  dream,  has  no  place 


in  mine." 


THE  present  volume,  to  reiterate,  marks  no 
change  of  heart.  Technically  I  am  surer  of 
my  instrument.  Spiritually  my  field  has  expanded. 
But,  in  the  last  analysis,  personality  is  immutable. 
I  can  clearly  trace  my  artistic  evolution  along  the 
lines  which  I  myself  laid  down  in  an  early 
pronunciamento.  I  have  emancipated  myself  en 
tirely  from  the  conventional  stanza  and  the  con 
ventional  arrangement  of  rhymes.  I  am  in  poetry 
what  Strauss  is  in  music,  Rodin  in  sculpture,  and 
Stuck  in  painting, — a  cerebral  impressionist.  But 
I  am  not  an  anarchist.  I  never  transgress  con 
sciously  artistic  laws  of  universal  validity.  I 
merely  modify  certain  traditional  forms.  Such 
modifications  are  not  at  once  obvious  to  the  eye  in 
the  present  volume,  because  I  have  not  followed  the 
somewhat  phantastic  rhyme  arrangement  which  I 
adopted  in  Nineveh  to  differentiate  between  vari 
ous  groups  of  rhymes.  For  when  the  lines 
sprawl  across  the  page  grotesquely  like  tremulous 


INTRODUCTION  xix 

spiders,  the  mind  is  diverted  from  the  poem  to  the 
form,  and  the  artistic  method  defeats  the  artistic 
aim.  In  this  book  I  have  placed  lines  that  rhyme 
under  each  other,  wherever  this  was  possible  with 
out  injuring  the  architectonic  structure.  I  am  per 
fectly  willing  to  sacrifice  logic  to  effectiveness  in 
art.  Poetry  has  its  architecture  as  well  as  its 
music.  The  free  stanza  which  I  consistently  em 
ploy  permits  of  the  freedom  of  Whitman  without 
sacrificing  the  tonal  advantage  of  Poe.  My  artistic 
aim,  declared  years  ago  in  the  preface  to  Nineveh, 
has  been  and  still  is,  "  to  extend  the  borderland 
of  poetry  into  the  realm  of  music  on  the  one  side, 
into  that  of  the  intellect  on  the  other." 

GEORGE  SYLVESTER  VIERECK. 
New  York,  1912. 


THE    CANDLE  AND    THE   FLAME 


THE  CANDLE  AND  THE  FLAME 


'"T^HY  hands  are  like  cool  herbs  that  bring 
Balm  to  men's  hearts,  upon  them  laid; 

Thy  lovely-petalled  lips  are  made 
As  any  blossom  of  the  spring. 
But  in  thine  eyes  there  is  a  thing, 

O  Love,  that  makes  me  half  afraid. 

For  they  are  old,  those  eyes.  .  .  .  They  gleam 
Between  the  waking  and  the  dream 

With  antique  wisdom,  like  a  bright 
Lamp  strangled  by  the  temple's  veil, 

That  beckons  to  the  acolyte 
Who  prays  with  trembling  lips  and  pale 

In  the  long  watches  of  the  night. 

They  are  as  old  as  Life.     They  were 
When  proud  Gomorrah  reared  its  head 

A  new-born  city.     They  were  there 
When  in  the  places  of  the  dead 

Men  swathed  the  body  of  the  Lord. 
They  visioned  Pa-Wak  raise  the  wall 
Of  China.     They  saw  Carthage  fall 

And  marked  the  grim  Hun  lead  his  horde. 


4;    THE  CANDLE  AND  THE  FLAME 

There  is  no  secret  anywhere 
Nor  any  joy  or  shame  that  lies 
Not  writ  somehow  in  those  child-eyes 
Of  thine,  O  Love,  in  some  strange  wise. 

Thou  art  the  lad  Endymion, 

And  that  great  queen  with  spice  and  myrrh 

From  Araby,  whom  Solomon 
Delighted,  and  the  lust  of  her. 

The  legions  marching  from  the  sea 
With  Caesar's  cohorts  sang  of  thee, 

How  thy  fair  head  was  more  to  him 
Than  all  the  land  of  Italy. 
Yea,  in  the  old  days  thou  wert  she 

Who  lured  Mark  Antony  from  home 
To  death  and  Egypt,  seeing  he 

Lost  love  when  he  lost  Rome. 

Thou  saw'st  old  Tubal  strike  the  lyre, 
Yea,  first  for  thee  the  poet  hurled 

Defiance  at  God's  starry  choir! 

Thou  art  the  romance  and  the  fire, 
Thou  art  the  pageant  and  the  strife, 

The  clamour,  mounting  high  and  higher, 
From  all  the  lovers  in  the  world 
To  all  the  lords  of  love  and  life. 

Through  thy  slow  slumberous  long  lashes 
Across  the  languor  of  the  face 


THE  CANDLE  AND  THE  FLAME      5 

The  gleam  of  primal  passion  flashes 
That  is  as  ancient  as  the  race, 
But  we  that  live  a  little  space, 

Which  when  beholding  feel  in  it 

The  horror  of  the  Infinite  .  .  . 

Perhaps  the  passions  of  mankind 

Are  but  the  torches  mystical 
Lit  by  some  spirit-hand  to  find 
The  dwelling  of  the  Master-Mind 

That  knows  the  secret  of  it  all, 
In  the  great  darkness  and  the  wind. 

We  are  the  Candle,  Love  the  Flame, 
Each  little  life-light  flickers  out, 

Love  bides,  immortally  the  same: 

When  of  life's  fever  we  shall  tire 

He  will  desert  us,  and  the  fire 
Rekindle  new  in  prince  or  lout. 

Twin-born  of  knowledge  and  of  lust, 
He  was  before  us,  he  shall  be 
Indifferent  still  of  thee  and  me, 
When  shattered  is  life's  golden  cup, 
When  thy  young  limbs  are  shrivelled  up, 
And  when  my  heart  is  turned  to  dust. 

Nay,  sweet,  smile  not  to  know  at  last 
That  thou  and  I,  or  knave,  or  fool, 


6      THE  CANDLE  AND  THE  FLAME 

Are  but  the  involitient  tool 
Of  some  world-purpose  vague  and  vast. 
No  bar  to  passion's  fury  set, 

With  monstrous  poppies  spice  the  wine : 
For  only  drunk  are  we  divine, 
And  only  mad  shall  we  forget ! 


THE  PARROT 

TO  ALFRED  RAU 

BIRD  grotesque  and  garrulous, 
In  green  and  scarlet  liveried, 
Thy  ceaseless  prattle  hides  from  us 
The  secret  of  thy  dream  indeed. 
But  in  thine  eyeball's  mystic  bead 
Are  mirrored  clear  to  them  that  read 
Vague,  nameless  longings,  like  the  breed 
Of  some  exotic  incubus. 

Where  is  thy  vision?    Overseas? 

In  some  bright  tropic  far-off  land 
Where  chiding  simians  in  tall  trees 

Swing  by  luxurious  breezes  fanned, 
While  at  phantastic  phallic  feasts 

Brown  women  uncouth  idols  hail, 

And  through  the  forest  sounds  the  wail 
Of  the  fierce  matings  of  wild  beasts? 

Or  are  thine  other  memories, 
Of  other  lives  on  other  trees, 

Encasements  in  some  previous  flesh 
In  far-off  lost  existences  ? 


8  THE  PARROT 

For,  as  the  tiger  leaves  his  spoor 
Upon  the  prairie,  firm  and  sure 
Life  writes  itself  upon  the  brain, 
The  soul  keeps  count  of  loss  and  gain, 
And  in  the  vibrant,  living  cells 
Of  the  small  parrot's  brain  there  dwells 
A  sparkle  of  the  flame  benign 
That  makes  the  human  mind  divine. 

The  self-same   Life-Force  fashions  us: 
Its  writings  are  the  stars  on  high, 
Its  transient  mansions  thou  as  I. 

Through  Plato's  mouth  it  speaks  to  us, 

Through  the  earth's  vermin  even  thus. 
The  heaving  of  a  baby's  breast 

And  the  gyrations  of  the  sun 

To  its  omnipotence  are  one 

And  make  its  meaning  manifest. 

We  both  are  wanderers  through  all  time 

Who,  risen  from  the  primal  slime 
When  God  blew  life  into  the  dust, 

Press  to  some  distant  goal  sublime. 
And  often  through  the  thin  soul-crust 

Rush  memories  of  an  alien  clime, 
Of  gorgeous  revels  more  robust 
Than  any  dream  of  hate  or  lust 
In  the  gilt  cage  upon  us  thrust, 

And  visions  strange  beyond  all  rhyme. 


THE  PARROT  9 

The  Life-Force  with  itself  at  war 

Moulds  and  remoulds  us,  blood  and  brain, 
Yet  cannot  quench  us  out  again, 

And  after  every  change  we  are. 

The  soul-spark  in  all  sentient  things 
Illumes  the  night  of  death  and  brings, 

Remembered,  immortality: 

Time  cannot  take  thy  soul  from  thee ! 
All  living  things  are  one  by  kind, 
Heritors  of  the  cosmic  mind. 

Thus  deemed  the  Prophet  on  whose  knee 

The  kitten  slumbered  peacefully, 

And  surely  good  Saint  Francis,  he 
Who  as  his  sister  loved  the  hind. 


THE  PRISONING  OF  SONG 

TO  EDWARD  J.  WHEELER 

'"TTVHERE  lay  one  weeping  at  Apollo's  feet 

Whose  tuneful  throat  was  like  a  golden  well. 
Her  tears  unutterably  sweet 
Made  music  as  they  fell. 

"  Thee  have  I  served,  O  Father,  all  my  days, 
Yea,  ere  thy  hand  had  made  the  lute-string  and 

the  lyre, 
Out  of  my  heart  I  snatched  the  terror  and  the 

fire, 
And  with  my  body  wrought  thy  perfect  praise. 

"  I  am  the  rapture  of  the  nightingale 

Heavenward  winging, 

The  song  in  singing, 
Beauty  audible. 

*  With  rumbling  thunder  and  discordance  hideous 
The  gods  and  stars  shall  tumble  from  the  sky, 

But  beauty's  curve  enmarbled  lives  in  Phidias, 
And  Homer's  numbers  cannot  die. 


10 


THE  PRISONING  OF  SONG          n 

"  To  them  that  are  my  sisters  them  hast  given 
Eternity  of  bronze  and  script  and  stone. 

I,  only  I,  must  perish,  tempest-driven, 
In  the  great  stillness  where  no  moan 
Is  heard,  wind  stirs,  nor  reed  is  blown." 

Apollo  wept. 

"  Most  sweet,  most  delicate, 
Death  fears  that  he  might  tarry  at  thy  gate 

Too  fond,  too  long, 

And  that  while  listening  he  forget  the  throng 
Who  call  upon  him  with  their  piteous  cries. 

Thy  sweetness,  hence,  in  every  song 
Lives,  and  in  each  song  dies." 

He  paused.     Unlovely  grief  made  dark 
His  shining  countenance,  when,   mark! 

There  rose  the  proud  Promethean  race 
Unto  whose  voice  the  thunders  hark, 
Who  sailing  in  a  fragile  bark 

Have  seen  the  heavens  face  to  face. 

Their  arms  both  lands  and  ocean  span, 
They  snare  the  lightning  in  a  trice. 
Yea,  by  incredible  device 

They  prison  sound  in  curious  shells, 

And  by  these  signs  and  miracles 

Proclaim  the  masterhood  of  man. 


12          THE  PRISONING  OF  SONG 

O  listen,  all  men,  and  rejoice, 
For  lo,  Caruso's  argent  voice 

Endures  as  granite,   even  so, 
And  Garden's  song,  like  Plato's  thought, 
Or  like  a  mighty  structure  wrought 

By  Michael  Angelo ! 

And  when  the  land  is  perished,  yea, 
When  life  forsakes  us,  and  the  rust 

Has  eaten  bard  and  roundelay, 
Still  from  the  silence  of  the  dust 

Shall  rise  the  song  of  yesterday! 


GERSUIND 

OOME  amorous  demon  wrought  your  limbs 
^     Hewn  out  of  moonwhite  ivory; 

Over  your  visage  restlessly 
Flickers  the  semblance  of  a  soul, 

And  yet,  queer  wench,  you  are  to  me 
More  monstrous  than  the  evil  hymns 

The  black  priest  chants  in  mockery, 
With  sound  obscene  and  eyes  that  roll, 

Of  the  good  Shepherd  of  the  See. 

Your  voice  is  instant  with  a  power, 

That,  like  thick  incense,  makes  men  mad. 
It  is  the  voice  the  Tempter  had, 

Who  whispered  in  an  evil  hour 
To  Judah's  king  and  Magdalen, 
And  cried  aloud  in  Sodom's  men 

For  the  two  angels  in  the  tower. 

You  smile  upon  me  and  your  mouth 
Half  opens  like  a  great  red  flower 

Athirsting  in  the  hot  sun's  drouth. 

Before  men's  scorn  you  will  not  cower, 
13 


14  GERSUIND 

Your  spirit  quails  not,  neither  squirms, 

And  yet  your  body  is  a  bower 
Where  unclean  wishes  crawl  like  worms. 


Black  meres — the  eyes,  beneath  your  lashes 
Dream,  by  life's  fitful  tide  unstirred, 
Save  when  some  quick  priapic  word 

Floods  them  with  phantom  lightning  flashes 
Whereof  the  thunder  is  not  heard. 

A  thousand  years  of  sick  desire 

Crouch  like  a  beast  that  snarling  lies, 

Stung  by  some  taunt  to  mortal  ire, 
In  the  abysses  of  those  eyes! 

Yet  when  I  gazed  upon  you,  child, 

All  bounds  from  us  I  fain  had  flung, 
And  bathed  with  healing  tears  and  mild, 

Your  head  so  pitifully  young. 
But  you,  not  knowing,  would  have  smiled 

And  love's  white  roses  smirched  with  dust, 
Seeing  each  nerve  in  you  defiled 

Is  vibrant  with  some  nameless  lust. 

Lo !  I  have  not  the  strength  divine 

Of  Him  whose  bare  feet  ruled  the  sea, 
To  make  your  girl  heart  whole  and  free 

And  drive  the  devils  into  swine. 


GERSUIND  15 

You  must  unto  your  dying  day 
Still  walk  unsolaced  and  alone, 
Yea,  and  beyond,  when  to  the  bone 

Your  little  breasts  shall  rot  away. 

Thus  in  the  phosphorescent  glow 

Of  your  corruption  you  shall  He 
Until  God's  awful  trumpets  blow, 
And  all  the  sleepers,  row  by  row, 

Each  with  the  other,  two  by  two, 
Rise  from  their  coffins,  and  the  grave 

Spits  forth  the  foulness  that  is  you. 

But  in  the  universal  spasm, 
When  the  apocalyptic  chasm 

Engulfs  the  water  and  the  land, 
Then  I  shall  come  and  comfort  you, 

Then  I  shall  hold  your  shrunken  hand 
The  grave  has  bitten  through  and  through, 
-With  never  nerve  to  twitch  or  goad — 

And  then  perhaps  you'll  understand 
The  kiss  that  I  have  not  bestowed  .  .  . 
And  ere  God's  hosts  are  marshalled  bright 

And  the  last  dreaded  veil  withdrawn, 
I  shall  be  with  you  in  the  night 

And  pray  until  the  doom  of  dawn. 


NERO  IN  CAPRI 

O  with  the  sun  beyond  the  hill, 

For  you  and  me  there  is  no  thrill 
In  any  rose  of  love  or  bud, 
Nor  any  quickening  of  the  blood. 
Lo,  from  the  tree  of  Good  and  111 

Each  strangest  fruit  our  hand  has  wrung, 
Lust's  adder  was  around  our  throat, 
And  on  our  lips  the  hissing  tongue. 

No  wanton  queen  by  Cupid's  grace 

Shall  snare  me  in  her  purple  mesh, 
I  take  mine  eyes  from  Helen's  face, 

I  tear  my  lips  from  Phryne's  flesh. 
Not  mine  that  martyr's  ecstasy 

Who  hellward  for  a  kiss  was  hurled ! 

The  ancient  passions  of  the  world 
Quench  not  the  bitter  thirst  of  me. 

The  isles  of  Lesbos  hide  no  dell 

Where  bides  a  rapture  strange  or  new, 

But  white  wan  ghosts  of  dead  sins  dwell 
In  Capri's  grottoes  monstrous  blue. 

The  books  of  Elephantis  tell 

Only  the  fortunes  that  befell 
16 


NERO  IN  CAPRI  17 

The  son  of  Hermes  and  of  her 
Who  wore  the  foam  as  vestiture, 

And  how  young  Leda's  heart  would  stir 
Beneath  her  plumed  paramour. 

Stale  is  to  me  the  thought  thereof, 
Of  this  man's  sin  and  that  man's  love. 

Ah,  that  the  world  had  but  one  mouth 

To  kiss  it  as  a  madman  doth ! 
Grant  me  the  strength  of  all  embraces 

In  the  five  circles  of  the  globe ! 
Make  mine  each  drop  of  blood  that  races, 

Clothe  me  with  romance  as  a  robe ! 
Bring  me  the  yearning  of  the  dreams 

Of  all  the  young  men  amorous ! 
Bruise  me  with  every  breast  that  gleams 

Beneath  some  hell-sent  incubus ! 


Let  madness  rise  in  one  bold  gust, 
And  in  the  carnival  of  lust 

Heap  fire  on  fire,  and  coal  on  coal, 

Join  all  things,  thighs,  and  hips,  and  soul, 
Until  at  last  the  panting  earth 
Shall  tremble  with  conjugial  mirth 

Like  a  drunk  wanton ;  till  desire, 
Heedless  of  scorpions  and  of  rods, 

Shall  toss  his  splendid  mane  of  fire 
And  smite  your  pale,  anaemic  gods ! 


1 8  NERO  IN  CAPRI 

Then,  like  a  cyclopean  brand 

That  threatening  rises  from  the  deeps, 
My  passion's  embers  newly  fanned 

Shall  be  a  flame  that  sings  and  leaps, 
With  every  bond  of  nature  riven, 

And  broken  every  gyve  that  bars, 
In  the  concupiscence  of  heaven, 

And  in  the  incest  of  the  stars ! 


A  BALLAD  OF  MONTMARTRE 

WITHIN  the  graveyard  of  Montmartre 
Where  wreath  on  wreath  is  piled, 
Where  Paris  huddles  to  her  breast 

Her  genius  like  a  child, 
The  ghost  of  Heinrich  Heine  met 
The  ghost  of  Oscar  Wilde. 

The  wind  was  howling  desolate, 

The  moon's  dead  face  shone  bright; 

The  ghost  of  Heinrich  Heine  hailed 
The  sad  wraith  with  delight : 

"  Is  it  the  slow  worm's  slimy  touch 
That  makes  you  walk  the  night? 

"  Or  rankles  still  the  bitter  jibe 

Of  fool  and  Pharisee, 
When  angels  wept  that  England's  law 

Had  nailed  you  to  the  Tree, 
When  from  her  brow  she  tore  the  rose 

Of  golden  minstrelsy?  " 

Then  spake  the  ghost  of  Oscar  Wilde 

While  shrill  the  night  hawk  cried: 

19 


20      A  BALLAD  OF  MONTMARTRE 

"  Sweet  singer  of  the  race  that  bare 

Him  of  the  Wounded  Side, 
(I  loved  them  not  on  earth,  but  men 

Change  somehow,  having  died). 

"  In  Pere  La  Chaise  my  head  is  laid, 

My  coffin-bed  is  cool, 
The  mound  above  my  grave  defies 

The  scorn  of  knave  and  fool, 
But  may  God's  mercy  save  me  from 

The  Psychopathic  School  1 

1  Tight  though  I  draw  my  cerecloth,  still 

I  hear  the  din  thereof 
When  with  sharp  knife  and  argument 

They  pierce  my  soul  above, 
Because  I  drew  from  Shakespeare's  heart 

The  secret  of  his  love. 


"  Cite  not  Krafft-Ebing,  nor  his  host 

Of  lepers  in  my  aid, 
I  was  sufficient  as  God's  flowers 

And  everything  He  made; 
Yea,  with  the  harvest  of  my  song 

I  face  Him  unafraid. 

"The  fruit  of  Life  and  Death  is  His; 
He  shapes  both  core  and  rind  .  .  ." 


A  BALLAD  OF  MONTMARTRE      21 

Cracked  seemed  and  thin  the  golden  voice, 

(The  worm  to  none  is  kind), 
While  through  the  graveyard  of  Montmartre 

Despairing  howled  the  wind. 


A  BALLAD  OF  KING  DAVID 

A  S  David  with  Bath-Sheba  lay, 
-**'     Both  drunk  with  kisses  long  denied, 
The  King,  with  quaking  lips  and  gray, 

Beheld  a  spectre  at  his  side 
That  said  no  word  nor  went  away. 

Then  to  his  leman  spake  the  King, 

The  ghostly  presence  challenging : 
"  Bath-Sheba,  erst  Uriah's  wife, 
Thy  lips  are  as  the  Cup  of  Life 

That  holds  the  purplest  wine  of  God, 

Too  sweet  for  any  underling." 

'  Yet,"  spake  Bath-Sheba,  sad  of  mien, 
'*  Why  from  thy  visage  went  the  sheen 

As  though  thy  troubled  eye  had  seen 
A  shadow,  like  a  dead  man's  curse, 

Rise  threatening  from  the  mound  terrene?  " 

"  'Twas  but  the  falling  dusk,  that  fills 
The  palace  with  phantastic  ills. 

Uriah  sleeps  in  alien  sands 

Soundly.    'Tis  not  his  ghost  that  stands, 


22 


A  BALLAD  OF  KING  DAVID        23 

Living  or  dead,  or  anything 

'Twixt  the  King's  pleasure  and  the  King." 

Bath-Sheba's  glad  heart  rose,  then  fell : 
"  Where  is  it  that  thy  fancies  dwell? 
Is  there  some  maid  in  Israel 

Broad-hipped,  with  blue  eyes  like  the  sea, 
Whose  mouth  is  like  a  honey-cell, 

And  sweeter  than  the  mouth  of  me?  " 

"  The  pressure  of  thy  lips  on  mine 
Is  exquisite  like  snow-cooled  wine. 
Over  the  wasteness  of  my  life 

Thy  love  is  risen  like  a  sun : 
All  other  loves  that  once  seemed  sweet 

Are  seized  by  black  oblivion." 

Again  upon  the  shadow-thing 
He  gazed  in  silence,  questioning. 
And  lo!  with  quaint  familiar  ring 
A  spectral  voice  addressed  the  King : 

"  O  David,  David,  Judah's  swan! 
Why  unto  me  dost  thou  this  thing?  " 

"Whoartthou?" 

"  I  am  Jonathan, 

My  heart  is  like  a  wounded  fawn." 

"  When  Saul's  fierce  anger,  like  a  bull, 
Rose,  by  the  Evil  One  made  blind, 


24        A  BALLAD  OF  KING  DAVID 

My  love  to  thee  was  wonderful, 
Passing  the  love  of  womankind. 
Hast  thou  forgotten  everything 
My  heart  aches  in  remembering  ? 
Is  such  the  harvest  of  our  spring 
Of  war  and  love  and  lute-playing? 

"  Oh,  why,  such  transient  love  to  win 

Bring  on  thy  soul  this  heavy  sin? 
Ah,  happy  they  who  die  in  grace, 
Ere  time  can  mar  their  lovely  face, 

And  their  young  hearts  grow  hard  within 
Yea,  happy  they  who  die  as  I, 
And  as  thine  unborn  child  shall  die. 

Already  at  the  palace  gate 

Stands  Nathan  with  the  word  of  fate !  " 

Was  it  a  ghost's  voice  or  the  wind? 
For  still  Bath-Sheba,  unaware, 

Smiled.    But  King  David  ill  in  mind 
Scarce  deemed  her  Beauty  half  so  fair: 

"  Stale  is  the  wine  this  evening, 
And  sick  with  roses  is  the  air!  " 
He  tore  the  garland  from  his  hair, 
And  left  Bath-Sheba  lying  there 

Perturbed,  and  vaguely  wondering  .  .  . 


THE  BALLAD  OF  THE  GOLDEN  BOY 

FOR  LEONARD  ABBOTT 

1T\A  VINCI'S  brow  in  curious  lines 
^^^      Of  contemplation  deep  was  knit. 

Fair  dreams  before  his  eyes  alit 
Like  water  when  the  moonlight  shines, 

Or  amber  bees  that  come  and  flit: 

How  to  make  rare  and  exquisite 
A  pageant  for  the  Florentines. 

He  beckoned  to  his  page,  a  lad 

Whose  lips  were  like  two  crimson  spots, 
Eyes  had  he  like  forget-me-nots. 

Yet  all  his  boyhood  sweet  and  glad 

In  frock  of  homely-spun  was  clad. 

And  of  his  multi-colored  whims 

The  strangest  thus  the  master  told: 

"  Child,  I  shall  crown  thy  head  with  gold, 

And  stain  with  gold  thy  lovely  limbs. 
For  once  in  this  sad  age  uncouth 
The  bloom  of  boyhood  and  of  youth 

Shall  be  with  splendour  aureoled." 
25 


26  BALLAD  OF  THE  GOLDEN  BOY 

The  boy's  heart  leaped  in  one  great  bound. 

1  Thy  gracious  will,"  said  he,  "  be  done!  " 
And  ere  the  lad  was  disengowned 

The  eager  painter  had  begun 
To  clothe  his  hair  with  glory  round 

And  make  his  visage  like  the  sun. 

Then,  seven  stars  upon  his  breast, 
And  in  his  hands  a  floral  horn, 

Like  a  young  king  or  like  a  guest 
From  heaven,  riding  on  the  morn, 
Splendid  and  nude,  the  boy  was  borne 

In  triumph  on  the  pageant's  crest. 

Like  the  sea  surging  on  the  beach, 
Reverberant  murmurs  rise  to  greet 
The  masqueraders  on  the  street. 

But  what  is  this?    A  learned  leech 
Hatless,  dishevelled,  runs  to  meet 

The  train.     White  terror  halts  his  speech. 

"  Poor  lad,  my  lad,  for  Heaven's  pity," 
Shakes  on  the  air  a  father's  cry, 
"  Strip  from  thy  flesh  this  gilded  lie, 

Else,  for  the  pleasure  of  the  city, 
A  self-slain  Midas,  thou  must  die !  " 

And  terror  smote  the  revelry. 

The  master's  features  white  and  sad 


BALLAD  OF  THE  GOLDEN  BOY  27 

Twitched,  yet  no  single  word  spake  he, 
But  full  and  straight  rose  up  the  lad, 

Upon  his  lips  curled  wistfully 
The  smile  that  Mona  Lisa  had. 

"  Good  Sir,"  said  he,  "  what  mortal  power 
In  all  the  dark-winged  years  and  fleet, 

Could  me,  a  lowly  lad,  endower 

With  any  boon  more  great,  more  sweet, 

Than  to  have  felt  one  epic  hour 
A  city's  homage  at  my  feet? 

"  By  the  slow  tooth  of  time  uneaten, 
And  all  the  foul  things  that  destroy, 

From  Life's  mad  game  I  rise  unbeaten, 
Drenched  with  the  wine  of  youth  and  joy, 
Great  Leonardo's  Golden  Boy. 

"  Let  this  be  told  in  song  and  story, 
Until  the  eyes  of  the  world  grow  dim, 

Till  the  sun's  rays  are  wan,  and  hoary 
The  ringlets  of  the  cherubim, 

That  in  my  boyhood's  glow  and  glory 
I  died  for  Florence  and  for  him. 

"  And  when  the  damp  and  dreary  mould 
Full  soon  my  little  limbs  shall  hold, 

Let  Leonardo's  finger  write 
Upon  my  grave,  in  letters  bold : 


28   BALLAD  OF  THE  GOLDEN  BOY 

'  His  life  was  as  a  splash  of  gold 

Against  the  plumage  of  the  night.' " 

Thus  spake  the  lad;  and  onward  rolled 

The  world's  great  pageant  fierce  and  bright. 


THE  CYNIC'S  CREDO 

17*  ROM  the  cloistered  halls  of  knowledge  where 

•*•      phantastic  lights  are  shed 

By  a  thousand  twisted  mirrors,  and  the  dead  en 
tomb  their  dead, 

Let  us  walk  into  the  city  where  men's  wounds  are 
raw  and  red. 

Three  gifts  only  Life,  the  strumpet,  holds  for 
coward  and  for  brave, 

Only  three,  no  more — the  belly  and  the  phallus  and 
the  gravel 


When  the  slow  disease  of  time  writes  on  our  face 
its  horrid  scrawl, 

These  be  good  gifts,  these  be  real,  let  what  will 
the   rest  befall, 

Both  the  first  gift  and  the  second — but  the  last 
is  best  of  all. 

Faith  and  hope  and  friends  desert  us  ere  the  cere 
cloth's  folds  are  drawn; 

These  remain  while  life  remains  and  one  remains 
when  all  are  gone. 
39 


30  THE  CYNICS  CREDO 

Who  am  I  to  judge  the  pander?    Who  are  you  to 

damn  the  thief? 
We  are  all  but  storm-tossed  sailors  stranded  on  the 

selfsame  reef. 
Strip  us  of  our  fine-cut  garments,  smite  us  with 

some  primal  grief, 
Then  behold  us  writhing  naked,  chain-bound  to 

our  carcass,  slave 
To  the  belly  and  the  phallus  and  (more  kind  than 

God)   the  grave. 

Why  desire  the  stars  in  heaven,  why  ask  more 

when  we  have  these? 
Beast  and  bird  shall  be  our  comrades,  we  as  they 

may  live  in  ease. 
Not   for  us  God's   angel  choir   and   His   cosmic 

silences ! 
Say  not  that  we,  too,  are  gods,  since  no  god  is 

strong  to  save 
From  the  hunger  of  the  belly  and  the  phallus  and 

the  grave. 

Saints  and  sinners  all  are  brothers,  none  is  happy 

while  a  trace 
Of  divine  and  half-forgotten  distant  music  makes 

the  race 
Dream  of  freedom  in  the  trap  that  holds  the  good 

man  and  the  base. 


THE  CYNICS  CREDO  31 

Like  the  worm  that  eats  our  substance,  longing  eats 

our  hearts :  we  crave 
For  a  life  beyond  the  belly  and  the  phallus  and 

the  grave. 

Let  us  nurse  no  vain  delusion !    Feast  on  love  and 

wine  and  meat, 
While  girls'  breasts  blush  into  rosebuds  and  the 

touch  of  flesh  is  sweet, 
For  the  earth,  our  buxom  mother,  loves  the  sound 

of  dancing  feet! 
Though  God  cursed  us  with  a  glimmer  of  His 

consciousness  He  gave 
Still  the  belly  and  the  phallus  and  life's  final  thrill 

— the  grave! 

And  who  knows  but  the  Almighty  in  His  heart  may 

envy  us? 
If  a  little  draught  of  knowledge  makes  man's  life 

so  dolorous, 
Then  the  crown  of  His  omniscience  is  a  crown  of 

thorns,  and  thus 
Time  that  ends  not  broods  on  heaven,  a  gigantic 

incubus. 
We  at  least,  through  evolution  climbing  upward 

from  the  cave, 
Have  the  belly  and  the  phallus  and  God's  kindest 

gift,  the  grave. 


LIFE 

'"T"SHOU  art  the  quick  pulsation  of  the  wine, 

The  laughter  and  the  fever  and  the  doom, 
Skull  crowned  with  roses,  malady  divine, 

Dweller  alike  in  cradle  and  in  tomb ! 
Thine  is  the  clangour  of  the  ceaseless  strife, 

The  agony  of  being,  and  the  lust; 
But  Death  thy  bridegroom  turns  thy  heart,  O  Life, 

Whence  thou  hast  risen,  to  the  primal  dust. 

As  one  that  loves  a  wanton  knowing  well 
That  she  is  false,  I  yield  me  to  thy  spell. 
But  when  my  cup  is  foaming  to  the  brim, 
Yea,  when  I  dream  that  I  have  clasped  the 

prize, 

I  see  the  scythe,  and  mark  the  face  of  him 
That  is  thy  lover,  leering  from  thine  eyes. 


IRON  PASSION 

T    OVE'S  smiling  countenance  I  know, 
~*     But  not  the  anger  of  the  god, 
For  I  have  wandered  where  Boccaccio 
And  Casanova  trod. 

I  am  aweary  of  these  pleasant  things, 

The  gallant  dalliance  and  the  well-watched  fire. 
Give  me  the  magic  of  a  thousand  springs 
That  shook  the  blood  of  young  Assyrian  kings, 
That  stirs  the  young  monk  in  his  cell,  and  stings 
Crimson  and  hot! 

Wearing  the  crown  of  unassuaged  desire, 
Break  me  or  bless  me — only  love  me  not ! 

Corne  as  a  wanton  red  with  rouge  and  wine, 
And  I  shall  weave  out  of  my  song  for  thee 

A  purpler  cloak  than  his 

Who,  hating,  loved  that  Lesbia.     Come  to  me 

A  saint — the  halo  shall  be  thine 
Of  Beatrice. 

There  is  no  joy  in  tender  loves  or  wise, 

No  sweet  in  wrong: 
Come  unto  me  with  cruel,  loveless  eyes, 

O  iron  passion  of  the  lords  of  song! 

33 


INHIBITION 

TO  MY  PARENTS 

C\  FOR  the  blithesomeness  of  birds 

^^     Whose  soul  floods  ever  to  their  tongue ! 

But  to  be  impotent  of  words 

With  blinding  tears  and  heart  unstrung! 

Each    breeze    that    blows    from    homeward 
brings 

To  me  who  am  so  far  away 
The  memory  of  tender  things 

I  might  have  said  and  did  not  say. 

Like  spirit  children,  wraiths  unborn 

To  luckless  lovers  long  ago, 
Shades  of  emotion,  mute,  forlorn, 

Within  my  brain  stalk  to  and  fro. 

When  to  my  lips  they  rush,  and  call, 
A  nameless  something  rears  its  head, 

Forbidding,  like  the  spectral  wall 
Between  the  living  and  the  dead. 

O  guardian  of  the  nether  mind 

Where  atavistic  terrors  reel 
In  dark  cerebral  chambers,  bind 

Old  nightmares  with  thy  mystic  seal! 

34 


INHIBITION  35 

But  bar  not  from  the  sonant  gate 

Of  being  with  thy  fiery  sword 
The  sweetest  thing  we  wring  from  fate : 

Love's  one  imperishable  word! 


ON  BROADWAY 

/^REAT  jewels  glitter  like  a  wizard's  rain 
Of  pearl  and  ruby  in  the  women's  hair. 
And  all  the  men — each  drags  a  golden  chain, 
As  though  he  walked  in  freedom.     In  the 

glare, 
Luxurious-cushioned  wheels  a  revel-train 

Where  kings  of  song  with  weary  feet  have 

trod, 

Where  Poe,  sad  priest  to  Beauty  and  to  Pain, 
Bore  through  the  night  the  Vision  and  the 
God. 

And  yet,  perhaps,  in  this  assemblage  vast, 
In  some  poor  heart  sounds  the  enraptured 

chord, 
And  staggering  homeward  from  a  hopeless 

quest 
The    God-anointed    touched    me,    meanly 

dressed, 

And,  like  a  second  Peter,  I  have  passed 
Without  salute  the  vessel  of  the  Lord. 


THE  UNKNOWN  GODDESS 

ONE  day  I  stopped  at  a  bookvender's  place, 
And,  as  a  woman  fingering  old  lace, 
Caressed  the  volumes  holding  daintily 
The  treasure-troves  of  all  the  world  for  me. 
Though  flesh  clothe  not  their  fond  imaginings, 
The  dreams  of  poets  are  as  living  things.  .  .  . 
By  Socrates1  and  Plato's  "  Soul "  I  found 
"  Mam'selle  de  Maupin  "  in  rich  saffron  bound. 
And  wrangling  still  about  the  old  affair 
The  lad  and  lady  of  the  "  Sonnets  "  were, 
While  Laura  smiled  to  Beatrice;  when  he 
Who  marshalled  all  this  ghostly  company, 
The  clerk,  I  say,  drew  me  aside,  and  thus 
He  spake  to  me:  "  A  lady  beauteous 
Your  book,  O  Poet,  deems  most  exquisite, 
And  asks  you  please  to  write  your  name  in  it." 
"Who  can  it  be?" 

"  That  may  I  not  reveal. 
She  lives  in  splendor ;  dizzy  motors  reel 
At  her  command,  beside  an  equipage, 
And  oh !  her  town-house  is  a  queen's  menage  1  " 
I  acquiesced,  and  in  my  book,  my  own, 
Inscribed  a  greeting  to  the  fair  unknown. 

37 


38          THE  UNKNOWN  GODDESS 

But  now  I  know  'twas  magic,  'twas  a  snare ! 
If  to  a  witch  you  give  a  strand  of  hair 
She  draws  you  by  it  over  land  and  sea — 
Thus,  Unknown  Lady,  are  you  drawing  me ! 

The  ancient  Greeks  for  honeyed  lips  unkissed, 
For  far-off  things  still  hidden  in  time's  mist, 
For  hopes  obscure,  mysterious  vows  and  odd, 
Upreared  an  altar  to  the  Unknown  God ! 
Thus  in  my  heart  I  raise  a  shrine  to  you, 
O  Unknown  Goddess  of  Fifth  Avenue ! 
No  maiden  fair  my  vagrant  heart  can  thrill, 
For  you  I  know  not  must  be  fairer  still  .  .  . 
You  are  my  mistress,  and  to  you  belong 
The  passion  and  the  vision  and  the  song. 
Both  day  and  night  I  wonder  who  you  are, 
If  you  obey  some  far  phantastic  star? 
Are  your  hands  lilies  ?    Is  their  fragrance  sweet? 
And  shall  I  know  you  when  at  last  we  meet? 
Out  of  the  night,  O  Goddess,  send  a  sign 
And  prove  to  me  you  are  indeed  divine ! 


THE  VIRGIN  SPHINX 

TO  MURIEL  RICE 

T7ROM  what  strange  tomb  is  thy  strange  knowl 
edge  blown, 

Borne  on  the  wings  of  what  Chimaera's  brood? 

Thine  is  her  secret  whom  the  Serpent  wooed, 
And  his  who  kindled  passion  in  a  stone. 
Art  thou  her  child,  whom  Egypt  calls  her  own, 

Her  lore's  gray  guardian  hewn  in  granite  rude? 

Has  she,  perchance,  in  a  maternal  mood, 
Revealed  to  thee  her  musings  vast  and  lone? 

Indifferent  of  things  human  and  the  years, 
Cerebral  still  and  granite  still,  she  blinks 

Through  half-closed  lids  perennially  wise  .  .  . 
But  thou,  O  virgin  daughter  of  the  Sphinx, 

Grant  God  that  Love  may  scorch  thee  with  his 
tears, 

And  kiss  her  ancient  wisdom  from  thine  eyes ! 


THE  NUNS 

TO  DOROTHY  RICE 
{Suggested  by  her  Painting  at  the  Independent  Artists  Exhibition,  iqw\ 

A  WOODLAND  cloister  rude  and  desolate, 

Grim  shapes  of  anguish  hooded  in  despair: 
Half-crazed  with  horror,  yet  enthralled,  they 

stare 

Where,  fallen  hellward  from  his  holy  state, 
The  pale  young  priest  beside  the  altar  stands. 
Unto  the  night  his  gibbering  lips  rehearse 
A  litany  satanic  and  perverse. 
The  golden  monstrance  shudders  in  his  hands  .  .  . 

They  dare  not  call  upon  the  Holy  Name, 
Lest,  crashing  as  the  thunder  on  the  main, 

God's  anger  smite  them  with  His  sword  of  flame. 

And  so  they  leer,  eternally  the  same, 

Called  in  what  crevice  of  thy  tortured  brain, 
Prodigious  child,  from  nothingness  to  pain  ? 


40 


QUEEN  LILITH 

"T    ADY  of  mystery,  what  is  thy  history? 
-*-^     Where  is  the  rose  God  gave  to  thee, 

Where  is  thy  soul's  virginity?  " 
"  Lord,  my  Lord,  is  thy  speech  a  sword? 

What  is  it  thou  wouldst  have  of  me?" 

"  There  are  pleasant  passes  of  tender  grasses 
Where  the  kine  may  browse  and  the  wild  she- 
asses, 

Between  the  hills  and  the  deep  salt  sea, 
But  where  is  the  spot  that  is  branded  not 

With  the  Sign  of  the  Beast  on  thy  fair  body?  " 

"  Lord,  my  Lord,  ask  thy  Scarlet  Horde! 

Who  spilt  my  love  and  my  life  like  wine? 

Who  threw  my  body  as  bread  to  swine? 
If  my  sins  in  heaven  be  seventy  times  seven, 

What  between  heaven  and  hell  are  thine?  " 

"  Lady,  where  is  it  thy  fancies  hover, 

With  wolves'  eyes  prying  restlessly 
For  some  naked  thing  that  they  might  discover, 
Some  strange  new  sin  or  some  strange  new  lover, 
Beyond  the  lover  who  lies  with  thee?  " 
41 


42  QUEEN  LILITH 

"  Lord,  my  Lord,  who  has  struck  the  chord 
That  holds  my  heart  in  a  spider's  mesh? 

Prince  of  the  soul's  satiety, 
Whence  springs  that  hunger  beyond  the  flesh, 

That  only  the  flesh  can  appease  in  me?  " 

"  By  the  love  of  a  love  that  is  strange  as  myrrh, 
By  the  kiss   that  kills   and  the   doom   that 
smileth, 

By  my  cloven  hoof  and  my  fiery  spur, 
Thou  art  my  sister,  the  Lady  Lilith, 

I  am " 

"My  brother  Lucifer!" 

II  I  am  thy  lover,  I  am  thy  brother, 

Time  cannot  prison  us,  space  cannot  smother, 
Proudest  of  Jahveh's  kindred  we, 

Whom  Chaos,  the  terrific  mother, 
Begot  from  stark  Eternity. 

"  I  am  the  cry  of  the  earth  that  beguileth 

God's  trembling  hosts  though  they  loathe  my 

name, 

The  dauntless  foe  of  His  loaded  gamel 
But  where  is  the  tomb  that  had  hidden  Lilith, 
Of  the  Deathless  Worm  and  the  Quenchless 
Flame  ? 

"  I  hunted  thee  where  the  Ibis  nods, 

From  the  Bracken's  crag  to  the  Upas  Tree, 


QUEEN  LILITH  43 

My  lonesomeness  was  as  great  as  God's, 
When  He  cast  us  out  from  His  Holy  See, 
But  now  at  the  last  thou  art  come  to  me ! 

"  Let  Mary  of  Bethlehem  lord  it  in  Heaven, 
While  stringed  beads  her  seraphs  tell, 
(How  art  thou  fallen,  Gabriel!) 

Thy  bridesmaids  shall  be  the  Deadly  Seven, 
And  I  will  make  thee  a  queen  in  Hell !  " 


2.  SAMUEL,  I.  26 

TO  T.  E.  H. 

iron  finger  wrote  the  law 
Upon  an  adamantine  scroll 
That  thrilled  my  life  with  tender  awe 
When  first  I  met  you  soul  to  soul. 

Thence  springs  the  great  flame  heaven-lit, 
Predestined  when  the  world  began, 

Whereby  my  heart  to  yours  is  knit 
As  David's  was  to  Jonathan. 


44 


ENIGMA 

TO  A.  L. 

A  MOUTH  more  strange  than  Mona  Lisa's  is. 
*       Deep  eyes  where  dreams  an  infinite  despair 

In  the  blue  shadow  of  mysterious  hair 
That  crowned  the  temples  of  Semiramis! 
Thine  is  the  smile  that  murders  with  a  kiss 

Of  her  whose  body  was  a  perfect  prayer 
To  Ashtoreth,  and  all  the  mysteries 

Of  all  the  queens  of  all  the  East  are  there. 

This  age  of  brass  has  sealed  thy  soul  with  fears, 
And  prudence  blights  thy  poppies  like  a  pall : 

Perchance  thy  words  might  move  the  world  to 

tears, 
And  thy  great  secret  save  or  sear  us  all : 

But  round  about  thee — an  enchanted  wall — 
The  silence  hovers  of  a  thousand  years. 


45 


A  LITTLE  MAID  OF  SAPPHO 

LITTLE  siren  of  the  rose-white  skin, 
Reared  to  strange  music  and  to  stranger  sin, 
With  scornful  lips  that  move  to  no  man's  plea — 
O  little  Maid  of  Sappho,  come  to  me ! 
Beneath  long  lashes  downcast  eyes  and  coy, 
Yet  uninitiate  to  no  secret  joy! 
O  bud  burst  open  ere  her  day  begun, 
The  virgin  and  the  strumpet  blent  in  one! 
Come  close  to  me !    Lay  your  small  hand  in  mine, 
And  drink  the  music  of  my  words  like  wine. 
And  let  me  touch  your  little  breasts  that  swell 
With  joy  remembered  where  her  kisses  fell  .  .  . 
Ah !  she  whose  wise  caressive  fingers  strike 
Your  heart-strings  and  the  cithara  alike! 
By  what  love-potion  is  your  passion  fanned, 
What  is  the  magic  of  that  wary  hand? 
What  is  the  secret  of  her  strange  caress, 
Fierce,  tortured  kisses,  or  the  tenderness 
That  woman  gives  to  woman — flame  or  snow? 
I,  too,  can  kiss  or  bruise  you.     You  shall  know 
That  love  like  mine  is  delicate  as  hers, 
Or  madder  still,  to  madder  passion  stirs, 
That  shall  consume  you  like  some  fiery  sea — 
O  little  Maid  of  Sappho,  come  to  me ! 

46 


A  LITTLE  MAID  OF  SAPPHO       47 

Or  is  it  song  that  sets  your  blood  on  fire? 
Behold  in  me  no  novice  to  the  lyre. 
Who  is  this  woman  Sappho?    I  can  sing 
Like  her  of  Eros.     Yea,  each  voiceless  thing, 
The  very  rocks  of  Mytilene's  strand 
Shall  be  made  vocal  at  your  sweet  command. 
Hers  but  the  cooing  of  the  Lesbian  lutes, 
Mine  every  passion  in  the  heart  that  roots. 
Albeit  your  sweetness  lives  in  Sappho's  song, 
Her  love  is  barren  .  .  .  and  the  years  are  long. 
And    how    she    sang,    and    how    she    loved    and 

erred, 

Only  by  moonsick  women  will  be  heard. 
The  lyric  thunder  that  my  hand  has  hurled 
Shall  ring  with  resonant  music  through  the  world, 
Quickening  the  blood  in  every  lover's  breast, 
And  then  your  beauty  on  my  glory's  crest 
Shall  ride,  a  goddess,  to  eternity— 
O  little  Maid  of  Sappho,  come  to  me! 


Unscathed  in  Love's  dominion  I  have  been, 
And  still  a  sceptic  kissed  the  mouth  of  Sin. 
Love  seemed  the  dreariest  of  all  things  on  earth 
Until  my  passion  filled  your  heart  with  mirth ! 
Like  frightened  bird  my  cynic  wisdom  flies 
Before  the  cruel  candour  of  your  eyes. 
As  for  sweet  rain  a  valley  sick  with  drouth, 
Thus  thirsts  my  love  for  your  indifferent  mouth  1 


48       A  LITTLE  MAW  OF  SAPPHO 

And  still  your  thoughts  are  wandering  to  the  dell 
Where    Sappho   walks    and    where    her    minions 

dwell  .  .  . 

Be  then,  of  maidens  most  corrupt,  most  chaste, 
The  one  delight  that  I  shall  never  taste! 
And  through  the  dreary  aeons  yet  unborn 
The  love  of  you  shall  rankle  like  a  thorn  ! 
Leave  one  last  thrill  for  my  sad  heart  to  crave 
In  the  ennui  of  heaven  or  the  grave!  .  .  . 
Incite  my  passion,  my  embraces  flee — 
And  never,  never,  never  come  to  me ! 

0  listen,  listen  to  my  heart-beat's  call! 
Aught  else  I  say,  it  is  not  true  at  all. 

She  has  her  maidens  whom  her  soft  ways  woo, 
And  they  to  her  are  no  less  dear  than  you. 
For  your  dear  sake  I  gladly  fling  aside 
Laurels  and  loves !     A  beggar  stripped  of  pride, 

1  only  know  I  need  you  more  than  she — 
O  little  Maid  of  Sappho,  come  to  me! 


N 


CHILDREN  OF  LILITH 

TO  FRANCOIS  VILLON 

OW  tell  me,  Villon,  where  is  he, 


Young  Sporus,  lord  of  Nero's  lyre, 
Who  marked  with  languid  ecstasy 

The  seven  hills  grow  red  with  fire? 
And  he  whose  madness  choked  the  hall 

With  roses  and  made  night  of  day? 
Rome's  rulers  for  an  interval, 

Its  boyish  Caesars,  where  are  they? 

Where  is  that  city  by  the  Nile, 

Reared  by  an  emperor's  bronze  distress 
When  the  enamoured  crocodile 

Clawed  the  Bithynian's  loveliness? 
The  argent  pool  whose  listening  trees 

Heard  Echo's  voice  die  far  away? 
Narcissus,  Hylas,  Charmides, 

O  brother  Villon,  where  are  they? 

Say  where  the  Young  Disciple  roved 
When  the  Messiah's  blood  was  spilt? 

None  knows :  for  he  whom  Jesus  loved 
Was  not  the  rock  on  which  He  built. 

49 


50  CHILDREN  OF  LILITH 

And  tell  me  where  is  Gaveston, 

The  second  Edward's  dear  dismay? 

And  Shakespeare's  love,  and  Jonathan, 
O  brother  Villon,  where  are  they? 

Made — for  what  end? — by  God's  great  hand, 

Frail  enigmatic  shapes,  they  dwell 
In  some  phantastic  borderland, 

But  on  the  hitherside  of  hell ! 
Children  of  Lilith,  each  a  sprite, 

Yet  wrought  like  us  of  Adam's  clay, 
And  when  they  haunt  us  in  the  night 

What,  brother  Villon,  shall  we  say? 


LOVE'S  AFTERMATH 


summer  afternoon 
We  strangled  Love,  and  soon 
There  where  my  love  had  been, 
Upon  the  couch,  was  Sin. 

The  face  is  still  the  same, 
But  an  unholy  flame 
Gleams  in  her  eyes  that  serves 
To  whip  my  angry  nerves. 

Upon  affection's  tomb 
Miasmic  blossoms  bloom. 
Whims  monstrous  and  perverse 
Those  girlish  lips  rehearse. 

Her  body  seems  the  shrine 
Of  some  strange  Messaline, 
And  all  the  lusts  of  men 
That  tortured  Magdalen. 

And  when  beside  me  stirs 
That  soft  white  form  of  hers, 
A  voice  cries  out  to  me  : 
For  love's  sake,  set  her  free! 
51 


52  LOPE'S  AFTERMATH 

At  last  I  understand 

Who  with  untrembling  hand 

Destroy  a  lovely  shell, 

To  save  the  soul  from  hell! 


THE  SINGING  VAMPIRE 


'T^HOU  art  no  goddess  risen  clean 

From  the  infatuated  brine; 
Nay,  rather  an  exotic  queen, 

A  dark,  low-templed  Messaline, 
Dumb  till  some  human  sacrifice 

Be  spilt  upon  her  monstrous  shrine  : 
With  tears  and  blood  we  paid  the  price 

Of  all  those  golden  songs  of  thine. 

Life  of  an  hundred  victims  throbs 

In  thy  enchantments  fierce,  uncouth, 
And  through  thy  rose-red  passion  sobs 

The  pallid  wraith  of  ruined  youth. 
Within  thy  bosom's  labyrinth 

Has  not  the  monster  had  his  fill? 
Why  slay  this  stainless  Hyacinth? 

Are  there  not  men  to  do  thy  will  ? 

And,  though  thy  hungry  eyes  had  rein 
Upon  his  boyish  throat  and  hips, 

His  sweet  young  self  thou  shalt  not  drain, 
Nor  bruise  him  with  thy  cruel  lips. 
53 


54  THE  SINGING  VAMPIRE 

Fate's  arm  against  thy  heart  shall  thrust 
The  sabre  of  thine  ancient  wrong, 

O  man-devouring  queen  of  lust ! 
O  scarlet  mouth  of  tuneful  song ! 

And  men  shall  shun  thee  as  the  pest 

That  see  thy  blood-red  mouth — and  know, 
And  though  thou  beat  thine  arid  breast 

Yet  neither  milk  nor  song  shall  flow. 
The  asp  of  unassuaged  desire 

Within  thy  famished  flanks  must  dwell, 
Doomed  to  endure  till  all  things  tire, 

In  an  eternal  songless  hell. 


THE  MASTER  KEY 

TO  WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE 

loves  have  I,  both  children  of  delight: 
One  is  a  youth,  like  Eros'  self,  to  whom 
My  heart  unfolds,  as  lotus  blossoms  bloom 
When  her  mysterious  service  chants  the  Night; 
And  one  is  like  a  poppy  burning  bright. 

Her  strong  black  tresses  bind  the  hands  of  doom, 
She  is  a  wraith  from  some  imperial  tomb, 
Of  love  enhungered,  in  the  grave's  despite. 

Lord,  though  thou  be,  O  Shakespeare,  of  all  rhyme, 
Life  is  more  strong  than  any  song  of  thine. 

For  thou  wast  thrall  to  circumstance,  and  Care 
With  rankling  poison  marred  thy  singing  time : 
From  hell's  own  lees  I  still  crush  goodly  wine, 
And  like  a  Greek,  and  smiling,  flout  despair! 


55 


THE  PILGRIM 

'-pHERE  knocked  One  nightly  at  the  harlot's 

house; 

Wan  was  His  mouth  as  kisses  without  love. 
His  groping  fingers  followed  tremulous 
The  winding  of  her  delicate  thin  veins; 
He  traced  the  waxen  contour  of  her  breast, 
And  then,  as  baffled  in  some  strange  pursuit, 
Drew  her  to  Him  in  weariest  embrace; 
And,  as  she  shuddered  in  His  grasp,  He  watched, 
Still  passionless,  the  working  of  her  throat. 
The  woman's  cheek  grew  crimson  as  He  gazed, 
But  He,  a  scowling  and  disgruntled  guest, 
Rose  white  and  famished  from  her  body's  feast. 
Yet  one  night,  pausing  half-way,  He  turned  back, 
Lured  by  the  wraith  of  long-departed  hope; 
And  then  He  asked  of  her  a  monstrous  thing  .  .  . 
The  strumpet  blanched  and,  rising  from  the  couch, 
Spat  in  His  face. 

Straightway  the  Stranger's  eye 
Blazoned  exultant  with  the  pilgrim's  joy 
When  ends  the  quest.    He  lifted  up  His  hands 
In  quiet  benediction,  and  a  light 
Miraculous  upon  His  forehead  shone. 

56 


THE  PILGRIM  57 

But  she,  being  blind,  still  cursed  Him,  and  reviled : 
"  Albeit  I  sell  my  body  for  very  shame 

I  am  a  woman,  not  a  beast;  but  thou " 

"  And  I,"  quoth  he,  "  a  Seeker  after  God." 


POEMS  FROM  PLAYS 


THE  PRINCESS  WITH  THE  GOLDEN 
VEIL 

FROM    "  THE    VAMPIRE,"    BY    GEORGE    SYLVESTER 
VIERECK  AND  EDGAR  ALLAN  WOOLF 

FOR  MARGARET  EDITH  HEIN 

/~T"VHUS  spake  the  King  to  Marygold, 
•*"        His  speech  was  soft  with  many  sighs : 
"  Why,  Princess,  may  not  I  behold 

The  wonder  of  your  star-lit  eyes  ? 
Your  veil,  Beloved,  is  the  cloud 

Of  amber  that  obscures  the  sun. 
Strange  is  the  vow  that  bids  you  shroud 

Your  sweetness  like  a  sad-faced  nun. 

"  Perhaps  some  spirit  wrought  with  guile 

Around  your  heart  a  magic  spell. 
Behind  the  veil  you  weep  and  smile, 

Perhaps  you  hate  me — who  can  tell? 
Your  lips  are  silent  as  the  grave, 

And  with  strange  fear  my  cheek  is  pale; 
Have  mercy  on  the  King,  your  slave, 

O  Princess  with  the  Golden  Veil ! 

;t  Thrice  hallowed  was  the  glorious  hour 
When  through  the  veil  I  felt  your  breath, 

61 


62  THE  PRINCESS 

More  fragrant  than  a  passion  flower, 
Dear  as  a  mother's  words  at  death. 

Yet  the  sad  thought  beyond  control 
Gnaws  at  my  heart,  and  eats  and  grips, 

That  I  have  never  known  your  soul, 
Or  read  the  secret  from  your  lips. 

"  And  never  shall  I  understand, 

And  men  shall  hope  and  strive  and  fail, 

Until  some  Prince  from  Fairyland 

Shall  kiss  your  mouth  and  lift  the  veil. 

And,  though  my  heart  be  black  with  night, 
My  regal  lips  that  may  not  quail, 

Shall  smile  as  Arthur's,  when  his  sight 
In  guiltless  hands  beheld  the  Grail — 
O  Princess  with  the  Golden  Veil !  " 


JOAN'S  FAREWELL 

ENGLISHED    FOR   MAUDE    ADAMS    FROM   THE    GER 
MAN  OF  SCHILLER 

pAREWELL,  ye  hills,  ye  pastures  dearly  loved, 

Ye  quiet  homely  valleys,  fare  ye  well ! 
For  Joan  henceforth  shall  know  your  ways   no 

more, 

Joan  to  you  all  must  bid  a  long  farewell ! 
Ye  meadows  I  have  watered,  and  ye  trees 
That  I  have  planted,  wear  your  gladsome  green ! 
Farewell,  ye  grottoes,  and  ye  cooling  springs ! 
Sweet  Echo,  thou  the  valley's  lovely  voice, 
Oft  though  my  heart  for  thy  response  may  yearn, 
Joan  goes,  and  never — never — shall  return  ! 

Dear  tranquil  scenes  of  all  my  joyful  days, 
I  leave  you  now  behind  f orevermore  1 

Poor,  foldless  lambs,  go  ye  in  unknown  ways, 
And  walk  unherded  where  the  nightbirds  soar! 

For  I  am  called  another  flock  to  graze 
On  fields  of  peril  in  the  battle's  roar. 

I  must  obey  the  Spirit's  high  decree: 

Earth-born  ambition  has  no  part  in  me. 

63 


64  JOAN'S  FAREWELL 

He  that  to  Moses  upon  Horeb's  height 
Descended  fiery  on  the  bush  of  flame, 

Commanding  him  to  stand  in  Pharaoh's  sight; 
Who  once  to  Israel's  pious  shepherd  came, 

And  made  the  lad  His  champion  in  the  fight; 
Loves  to  exalt  a  lowly  shepherd's  name. 

He  hailed  me  from  the  branches  of  this  tree, 

"  Go  forth!     Thou  shall  on  earth  my  witness  be! 

"  Rude  brass  for  garment  shall  thy  soft  limbs  wear, 
In  clasp  of  iron  shall  thy  heart  be  pressed, 

Ne'er  in  thine  eyes  shall  seem  a  man's  face  fair 
Or  light  the  flame  of  mortal  love  unblessed! 

Never  the  bride-wreath  shall  adorn  thy  hair, 
Nor  lovely  baby  blossom  at  thy  breast, 

But  thou  shalt  be  War's  sacrificial  bride 

Above  all  earthly  women  glorified! 

"  When  the  most  brave  in  battle  shall  despair, 
When  ruin  threatens,  and  all  hope  seems  vain, 

Thine  arms  aloft  mine  oriflamme  shall  bear; 
And,  as  the  skilful  reaper  fells  the  grain, 

Thou  shalt  mow  down  our  foemen  everywhere, 
And  turn  Fate's  chariot  backward  by  thy  rein! 

Unto  all  France  shalt  thou  deliverance  bring, 

And,  freeing  Rheims,  in  triumph  crown  the  King!  " 

The  Heavenly  Spirit  promised  me  a  sign, 
He  sends  the  helmet,  for  it  comes  from  Him! 


JOAN'S  FAREWELL  65 

Its  iron  thrills  me  with  the  strength  divine 
That  fans  the  courage  of  the  Cherubim; 

And,  as  the  raging  whirlwind  whips  the  brine, 
It  drives  me  forth  to  lead  the  combat  grim. 

The  chargers  rear  and  trembling  paw  the  ground, 

The  war-cry  thunders  and  the  trumpets  sound! 


CHANTECLER'S  ODE  TO  THE  SUN 
(AFTER  THE  FRENCH  OF  ROSTAND) 

"1%/T  OTHER,  whose  great  love  dries  the  tears 
•*•          Of  every  little  weed  that  grows, 
And  makes  a  living  butterfly 

Of  the  dead  petals  of  the  rose, 
And  of  the  almond  blossoms  bright 

In  the  fair  vale  of  Rousillon 
That  tremble  in  the  scented  breeze 
Blown  downward  from  the  Pyrenees, 

Lo,  I  adore  thee,  Mistress  Sun! 

Beneath  thy  kiss  the  honey  ripes, 

Thy  blessing  is  on  every  brow; 
In  every  flower's  little  heart, 

In  every  hovel,  there  art  thou ! 
The  meanest  creatures  in  God's  world 

Share  in  thy  beneficial  fire, 
But,  even  as  a  mother's  love, 

Divided,  thou  art  still  entire. 

With  humble  pride  I  chant  thy  praise, 
My  priesthood  thou  wilt  not  disdain, 

66 


CHANTECLER'S  ODE  67 

Hast  thou  not  bathed  thy  radiant  face 
In  water  gathered  from  the  rain, 

Made  blue  with  curious  dye,  wherein 
Fine  linen  is  made  clean  from  stain? 

Thy  last  farewell  is  often  thrown 
Upon  a  lowly  window  pane. 

The  yellow  sunflower  turns  to  thee 

Her  radiant  countenance  in  prayer, 
My  brother  on  the  steeple  boasts 

Of  golden  plumes  when  thou  art  there ; 
And  gliding  through  the  linden  tree 

Thou  draw'st  strange  circles  on  the  ground 
Too  delicate  to  tread  upon, 

Save  for  some  sprite  in  silver  gowned. 

Thou  mak'st  a  rare  enamelled  thing 

Of  the  brown  pitcher  cracked  and  old, 
The  common  tools  of  farm  and  yard 

Are  by  thy  radiance  aureoled. 
And,  where  but  now  a  rag  was  seen, 

A  glorious  banner  is  unrolled, 
The  hayrick  and  its  little  mate, 

The  beehive,  wear  a  hood  of  gold. 

Glory  to  thee  upon  the  fields, 
And  glory  on  the  vineyards  high ! 

Thrice  blessed  thou  art  upon  the  door, 

Thrice  blessed  on  herb  and  grass  and  sky. 


68  CHANTECLER'S  ODE 

I  bless  thee  in  the  lizard's  eyes, 
And  on  the  pinions  of  the  swan. 

Thou  speak'st  to  us  in  little  things 
As  in  the  vastness  of  the  dawn. 

Thy  mandate,  Sun,  has  called  to  life, 

The  sombre  sister  of  the  light 
Who  humbly  cowers  at  the  feet 

Of  all  things  shining,  all  things  bright. 
For  thou  hast  given  unto  them 

A  shadow,  dancing  like  an  elf, 
That  often  seems  unto  the  eye 

More  lovely  than  the  thing  itself. 

I  worship  thee :  thy  holy  light 

Charms  lilies  from  the  crusty  sod, 
Thy  presence  sanctifies  the  brook, 

In  every  bush  thou  show'st  us  God! 
Thy  splendor  makes  the  tree  divine, 

And  lends  new  wonder  to  the  star, 
Save  for  thy  love,  O  Mother  Sun, 

All  things  would  seem  but  what  they  are  1 


THE  BREEZE 

(AFTER  THE  FRENCH  OF  ZAMACOIS) 

'TpHE  breeze  that  stirs  in  yonder  tree 

And  the  young  roses  rocks  to  sleep, 
Wafts  to  my  mind  the  memory 

Of  a  young  Zephyr  who  would  sweep 
Across  the  land  with  fellows  gay, 

Winged  with  the  wind  like  them,  and  bent 
On  fond  adventure,  who  one  May 
(O  wine  of  spring,  O  golden  day !) 

Traversed  a  castle's  battlement, 
And  on  the  terrace,  spinning  there, 
He  found  a  child  divinely  fair, 
(O  lovely  maid  with  sun-kissed  hair!) 

Swift  drawing  from  an  ivory  loom 
A  thread  more  soft  than  gossamer. 

Her  eyes  were  bluer  in  his  sight 
Than  the  enchanted  azure  mere 

Which  on  that  morning  in  his  flight 
His  wings  had  grazed,  and  crystal-clear. 

And  as  he  loosed  a  golden  strand 
From  her  dear  head,  she  raised  a  hand 
And  looked  and  laughed,  and  brushed  it 
back 

69 


?o  THE  BREEZE 

So  sweet,  so  chaste,  so  debonair, 

That  the  young  Breeze,  who  had  no  lack 

Of  conquests  in  the  heights  above 
Among  the  damsels  of  the  air, 

And  danced  a  pirouette  with  Love, 
Felt  that  his  heart  was  held  for  e'er 
By  that  sweet  child  divinely  fair, 
(O  sea-blue  eyes,  O  sun-kissed  hair!) 
Whose  lily  hands  were  spinning  there 
A  weft  more  soft  than  gossamer. 

Surely  no  tale  beneath  the  sun 

More  dainty  could  or  stranger  be, 
Than  how  that  maid  a  lover  won 

Whose  countenance  she  could  not  see. 
He  was  content  unknown  to  stir 

About  the  spinner  and  the  loom, 
And,  as  he  could  not  bring  to  her 

The  trees  and  flowers  all  abloom, 
He  wafted  shoals  of  butterflies 

With  wings  of  silver  to  her  room. 
Blue,  red  and  golden  butterflies 

He  blew  into  her  hair,  and  then 
When  she  caressed  them  with  her  eyes, 

In  fury  drove  them  out  again. 
The  scent  of  new-mown  hay  he  brought 

That  peasants  garner  in  the  fields, 
And  marjoram  and  meadow-sweet 

And  every  fair  the  garden  yields 


THE  BREEZE  71 

In  all  the  pleasant  realm  of  France: 

Forget-me-nots  and  rosemary 
And  orange-blossoms  from  Provence. 
These  and  full  many  perfumes  rare 
He  ravished  from  the  summer  air 
For  his  young  love  divinely  fair, 
(O  sea-blue  eyes,  O  sun-kissed  hair!) 

Smiling,  and  spinning  at  the  wheel 
The  weft  more  soft  than  gossamer. 


Full  beakers  of  the  sunshine  gold 

He  dashed  in  winter  on  her  cheeks  ; 
And,  in  the  sultry  summer  night, 

Cool  snow-drifts  from  the  mountain  peaks. 
When  over  courtly  tale  she  pored 

By  pious  monk  or  poet  sage, 
He  stood  behind  the  lady's  chair, 

Unbeckoned  oft,  to  turn  her  page. 
And,  when  the  lovely  maiden  slept 

Within  her  satin-curtained  bed, 
He  would  caress  her  honeyed  locks 

And  call  sweet  blessings  on  her  head. 
And  in  the  watches  of  the  night 

Once,  in  an  ecstasy  of  bliss, 
He  breathed  upon  her  dimpled  mouth 

The  thing  that  mortals  call  a  kiss. 
Alas !  One  day  from  Aquitaine, 

Upon  an  ebon-colored  mare, 


72  THE  BREEZE 

Rode  proudly  to  the  castle's  gate 
A  gallant  noble,  young  and  fair. 

And  he  was  smitten  with  great  love 
(O  sea-blue  eyes,  O  sun-kissed  hair!) 
When  he  beheld  the  lady  there 

Spinning  a  bridal  gown  more  white 
And  softer  still  than  gossamer. 

He  gave  her  pearls  her  throat  to  grace, 

And  bracelets  for  her  tender  wrist; 
How  can  the  sweetest  breeze  prevail 

O'er  ruby  ring  and  amethyst? 
When  it  was  known  that  she  would  wed 

The  fair  young  lord  from  Aquitaine, 
The  Zephyr  lashed  the  castle  wall, 

And  day  and  night  he  sobbed  in  pain. 
He  murdered  every  rose  there  bloomed 

That  none  might  deck  her  bridal  train. 
When  came  that  office  most  divine 

He  beat,  in  impotent  despair, 
Against  the  chapel's  holy  shrine, 
And  from  the  chalice  drank  the  wine. 

When  for  the  bride  divinely  fair 

(O  sea-blue  eyes,  O  sun-kissed  hair!) 
In  rich  brocade  and  satin  shoon 

And  veils  more  soft  than  gossamer, 
The  bells  intoned  a  marriage  rune, 

He  flew  into  the  sexton's  face 
Until  they  jangled  out  of  tune. 


THE  BREEZE  73 

Then  to  the  desert  wild  he  sped, 

Heart-broken,  anguished  and  alone. 
Before  his  rage  the  camels  fled, 

The  turbaned  merchants  feared  his  moan. 
He  raced  across  the  glacial  seas 

With  the  great  cyclones  of  the  world; 
And,  ever  waxing,  angrily 

Both  beast  and  bird  before  him  whirled. 
At  last,  still  panting  from  the  race, 
Back  to  fair  France  he  turned  his  face 

To  break  the  castle's  granite  tower, 
And  of  its  splendor  leave  no  trace. 
But  lo !  within  the  creaking  walls 

That  he  had  entered  to  destroy, 
He  found,  more  frail  than  any  flower 

And  fairer  far,  a  baby  boy. 
Infinities  of  love  and  trust 

Within  the  mother's  eyes  he  read, 
And  trembled  lest  he  harm  one  hair 

Upon  the  infant's  golden  head. 
He  pined  away  in  one  sweet  breath, 
Content  to  find  both  peace  and  death 

Beside  the  mother  still  more  fair, 

(O  sea-blue  eyes,  O  sun-kissed  hair!) 

Patiently  smiling,  spinning  there 

A  baby's  gown  of  gossamer. 


AVE    TRIUMPHATRIX 


AVE  TRIUMPHATRIX  77 


I 
ATTAR  OF  SONG 

T    IKE  Lilith,  mother  Lilith,  I  have  wound 
*^     About  my  heart  the  serpent  of  desire. 

A  purple  galleon  on  a  sea  of  fire 
Has  borne  my  footsteps  to  forbidden  ground, 
Where  glittering  with  corruption  all  the  time, 

Death  in  its  shadow,  dreams  the  Upas  tree; 

But  with  its  dew,  as  sugar  sucks  the  bee, 
I  have  enriched  the  honeycomb  of  rhyme. 

A  riot  of  strange  roses  is  my  life — 
Pale  as  Narcissus  gazing  wistfully, 
And  crimson  red  as  the  great  Rose  of  Strife 
Upon  the  zone  of  Menelaus'  wife, — 
Distilled  by  love  with  lyric  alchemy, 
Heart  of  my  heart,  into  one  song  for  thee. 


77 


78  AFE  TRIUMPH ATRIX 


II 
THE  BURIED  CITY 

TV/T  Y  heart  is  like  a  city  of  the  gay 

^   A     Reared  on  the  ruins  of  a  perished  one, 
Wherein  my  dead  loves  cower  from  the  sun, 

White-swathed  like  kings,  the  Pharaohs  of  a  day. 

Within  the  buried  city  stirs  no  sound 
Save  for  the  bat,  forgetful  of  the  rod, 
Perched  on  the  knee  of  some  deserted  god, 

And  for  the  groan  of  rivers  underground. 

Stray  not,  my  Love,  'mid  the  sarcophagi 

Tempt  not  the  silence  ...  for  the  fates  are 

deep, 
Lest  all  the  dreamers  deeming  doomsday  nigh 

Leap  forth  in  terror  from  their  haunted  sleep ; 
And,  like  the  peal  of  an  accursed  bell, 
.Thy  voice  call  ghosts  of  dead  things  back  from 
hell! 


AVE  TRIUMPHATRIX  79 


in 
THE  IDOL 

"IT 7HEN  from  thy  heart  the  altar  veil  was 
drawn 

I  saw  an  idol  on  a  golden  throne. 

Upon  his  forehead  burned  a  ruby  stone, 
His  visage  was  more  awful  than  the  dawn. 
He  made  the  heavens  a  loincloth  for  his  hips, 

Within  the  hand  he  lightly  held  the  globe, 

But  the  design  upon  his  mystic  robe 
Was  as  the  Beast  of  the  Apocalypse. 

God's  sons,  dear  heart,  no  longer  mate  with  man. 
I  too,  once  caught  in  Satan's  black  trapan, 

Bowed  to  an  idol  from  an  alien  star, 
But  through  the  clouds  of  incense  sick  with 

myrrh 
Spied  on  his  brow  the  sign  of  Lucifer: 

The  crimson  ruby  was  a  crimson  scar! 


8o  AVE  TRWMPHATRIX 


IV 

TRIUMPHATRIX 

A  S  some  great  monarch  in  triumphal  train 
•*  *•     Holds  in  his  thrall  an  hundred  captive  kings, 

Guard  thou  the  loves  of  all  my  vanished  springs 
To  wait  as  handmaids  on  thy  sweet  disdain. 
And  thou  shalt  wear  their  tresses  like  bright  rings, 

For  their  defeat  perpetuates  thy  reign ! 

With  thy  imperious  girlhood  vie  in  vain 
The  pallid  hosts  of  all  old  poignant  things. 

Place  on  thy  brow  the  mystic  diadem 
With  women's  faces  cunningly  embossed, 

Whereon  each  memory  glitters  like  a  gem; 
But  mark  that  mine  were  regal  loves  that  lost 
And  loved  like  queens,   nor  haggled   for  the 
cost — 

And  having  conquered,  oh  be  kind  to  them  I 


80 


AVE  TRIUMPHATRIX  81 


v 
AT  NIGHTFALL 

WEET  is  the  highroad  when  the  skylarks  call, 
When  we  and  Love  go  rambling  through 

the  land. 

But  shall  we  still  walk  gaily  hand  in  hand 
At  the  road's  turning  and  the  twilight's  fall? 
Then  darkness  shall  divide  us  like  a  wall, 
And  uncouth  evil  nightbirds  flap  their  wings; 
The  solitude  of  all  created  things 
Will  creep  upon  us  shuddering  like  a  pall. 

This  is  the  knowledge  I  have  wrung  from  pain : 
We,  yea,  all  lovers,  are  not  one,  but  twain, 

Each  by  strange   wisps   to  strange   abysses 

drawn. 

But  through  the  black  immensity  of  night 
Love's  little  lantern,  as  a  glow-worm's  bright, 

May  lead  our  steps  to  some  stupendous  dawn. 


81 


82  AFE  TRIUMPHATRIX 


VI 

FINALE 

HOW  changed  the  house  is  when  not  Love  is 
there! 

Your  deep  eyes  vex  me  like  some  magic  book 
I  cannot  ponder.    Nay,  I  will  not  brook 
The  weariness  of  your  too  golden  hair ! 
Hush !    Was  not  that  the  creaking  of  a  stair? 
Was  it  Love's  footfall  or  the  wind?     I  look 
In  vain  for  him  in  every  hidden  nook — 
There  is  no  sound  of  laughter  anywhere  .  .  . 

Ah,  sweet,  he  has  forsaken  us,  not  base, 

But  heedless,  boyish — and  the  world  is  wide ! 

He  sees  not  now  your  sorrow-haunted  face, 
Nor  feels  the  dagger  that  has  pierced  my  side, 

And  how  all  joy  is  vanished  from  the  place 
As  from  a  house  in  which  a  child  has  died. 


A  NEW  ENGLAND  BALLAD 


A  NEW  ENGLAND  BALLAD 

FOR  ALEXANDER  HAR  VEY 

T  TR  saw  the  drab  and  dreary  town 

Upon  the  mirthless  Sabbath  day; 

All  pleasant  things  had  crept  away 
Like  serfs  before  the  master's  frown; 
The  very  trees  their  heads  hung  down 

Upon  the  mirthless  Sabbath  day. 

Through  joy-deserted  streets  He  trod, 
The  church  bells  tolling  mournfully. 
There  was  no  sound  of  childish  glee, 
No  peal  of  laughter  praising  God 
Hailed  Him  that  loved  the  little  ones 
From  Judah  unto  Galilee. 

Barred  in  His  name  the  magic  bower 
Of  mimic  kings  and  queens  that  seem, 
Where  still  the  fairy-jewels  gleam, 
And  sonant  for  a  little  hour — 
From  faded  parchment  conjured  up 
Incarnate  walks  the  poet's  dream. 

But  through  a  gate  obscure  and  small 
He  watched  a  pale-faced  stripling  crawl 
85 


86         A  NEW  ENGLAND  BALLAD 

Into  a  closely-shuttered  place 
Where  Magdalens  untouched  of  grace 
Held  their  unlovely  festival, 

Wearing  the  hunted  look,  uncanny, 

Of  them  that  love  not  much  but  many. 

And  right  across  the  house  of  guilt 
Where  sweet  young  lips  were  made  all-wise 

In  unchaste  knowledge,  and  the  wine 
Of  glorious  youth  was  hourly  spilt — 

Grinning  upon  Him  like  a  skull, 
With  windows  bare  like  sightless  eyes, 

There  rose  the  House  Unbeautiful 
Wherein  God's  holy  shrine  was  built. 

And  buzzing  like  a  swarm  of  bees 
Around  the  church's  open  door, 

In  long  frock  coats  and  tall  silk  hats, 

The  sleek,  the  oily  Pharisees 

With  the  complacent  smile  of  yore — 

Dear  God,  how  He  remembered  these ! 

Upon  a  cross  of  ebony 

He  saw  His  image  painted  bleak 
With  pallid  lips  that  seemed  to  speak: 

"  My  God,  thou  hast  forsaken  me !  J> 
Such  was  the  symbol  of  their  faith — 
Not  like  a  godhead,  like  a  wraith 

Convulsed  with  futile  agony, 

Wherefrom  no  man  might  solace  seek. 


A  NEW  ENGLAND  BALLAD         87 

There  was  no  incense  in  the  air, 

Never  a  sweet-faced  acolyte, 
No  priest  in  sacrificial  dress 

Trailing  with  colors  strange  and  bright; 
No  organ  sounded  paeans  there, 

No  candelabrum  shed  its  light. 
No  gleam  of  hope  ...  of  loveliness, 

Of  awe  ...  or  beauty  anywhere. 

Beside  the  tabernacle  stood, 

Choked  with  things  hateful  that  destroy, 

A  weazened  parson  cursing  Joy; 
And  in  his  veins  there  flowed  no  blood. 
Upon  his  tongue  were  words  of  grace, 

Yet  every  time  he  spake  afresh 

He  drove  a  nail  into  His  flesh, 
And  praying  ...   .    .    spat  into  His  face! 

And,  while  his  curses  poured  like  showers 

Upon  all  things  that  men  hold  fair: 
The  pearls,  the  satin  and  the  flowers, 

Life's  graces,  perfumed,  debonair, 
With  voice  of  thunder  spake  the  Master: 

"  Hold,  parson!     Cease  thy  blasphemy!" 

"Who  art  thou,  stranger?" 

"  /  am  He 
Who  suffered  her  of  Magdala 

With  the  smooth  satin  of  her  hair 

To  dry  His  consecrated  feet. 


88         A  NEW  ENGLAND  BALLAD 

And  break  for  Him  the  alabaster 

That  held  the  spikenard  rare  and  sweet!1 

The  weazened  parson  deaf  and  blind 

Proceeded  of  God's  wrath  to  tell, 

And  of  a  lad,  of  one  who  fell 
Through  his  hot  blood  and  fates  unkind, 

Whom  to  the  terrors  of  God's  Hell 
And  to  His  vengeance  he  consigned. 

Again  the  voice  rose  threateningly: 

"Hold,  parson!     Cease  thy  blasphemy!" 

"Who  art  thou,  stranger?" 

"I  am  He 
Who  in  the  wilderness  forsaken, 

There  having  felt  temptation's  spur, 
Forgave  one  in  adultery  taken 
And  bade  ye  throw  no  stone  at  her!  " 

And  still  the  parson  cursed  and  whined, 
And  thus  he  spoke  to  womankind: 
'  Vileness  and  sin  of  every  shape 

Lure  in  the  ferment  of  the  grape. 
Seize  by  the  root  the  fruit  malign 
That  turns  all  good  men  into  swine !  " 

"  Impious  parson,  on  thy  knee! 

How  dare  ye  judge  your  Maker?    He 
Am  I  who  at  His  mother's  sign, 

And  for  her  glory,  turned  the  water 
In  the  six  water-pots  to  wine! 


A  NEW  ENGLAND  BALLAD         89 

"  /  am  who  through  the  bigot's  pride 
Of  righteous  fools  is  crucified. 

All  lovely  things,  if  these  be  slain, 

Then  were  My  sacrifice  in  vain! 
For  man  is  not  the  devil's  booty, 

Not  Mine  the  scorpion  and  the  rod, 
Not  sorrow  is  your  heavy  duty, 
And  they  that  worship  Him  in  beauty 

And  gladness  .  .  .  are  most  dear  to  God. 

"  Men  of  the  New  World,  heed  Me,  bliss 
And  all  God's  good  gifts  are  your  gain! 
From  Old  World  nightmares  cleanse  your 

brain  : 

Columbus  has  not  crossed  the  main 
To  open  up  new  worlds  to  pain! 

But  he  and  they  who  tell  you  this, 
Good  folk,  betray  you  with  a  prayer 

As  they  betrayed  Me  with  a  kiss!  " 

And  like  mysterious  music  died 
His  accents  on  the  shivering  air; 

And  through  the  heavens  opening  wide 

He  vanished  where  no  man  might  follow. 
Roses  for  thorns  were  in  His  hair, 
And  on  His  visage,  dwelling  there, 

Those  who  beheld  Him  saw,  enticed, 
[The  awful  beauty  of  Apollo, 


90        A  NEW  ENGLAND  BALLAD 

The  loving  kindness  which  is  Christ — 
But,  choked  with  visions  that  destroy, 

Still  by  the  cross  the  parson  stood, 
A  gibbering  madman,  cursing  Joy ! 


THE  PLAINT  OF  EVE 


THE  PLAINT  OF  EVE 

TO  BLANCHE  SHOEMAKER  WAG  STAFF 

"TV/TAN'S  mate  was  I  in  Paradise, 

•*•*•*•     Since  of  the  fruit  we  twain  did  eat, 
Through  the  slow  toiling  days  his  slave. 
Because  I  asked  for  truth,  God  gave 
All  the  world's  anguish  and  the  grave. 
But,  being  merciful  and  wise, 
He  bade  His  angel  bathe  mine  eyes 

With  the  salt  dew  of  sorrow.     Sweet 
Had  been  the  dew  of  Paradise." 

Yet  through  the  immemorial  years, 
Has  she  not  healed  us  with  her  tears? 

"  Albeit  upon  my  lips  I  wore 

A  smile,  my  heart  was  ever  sore. 

Because  I  heard  the  Serpent  hiss, 

Therefore  I  suffered  patiently. 
But  now  I  pray  for  bread,  and  ye 

Give  me  a  stone  or  worse — a  kiss." 

Shall  not  the  stone  rebound  on  us? 
Shall  not  the  kiss  prove  venomous? 

93 


94  THE  PLAINT  OF  EVE 

"  No  expiation  dearly  won, 

Can  turn  the  ancient  loss  to  gain, 

The  Son  of  Man  was  Mary's  Son  .  .  . 

Have  I  not  borne  the  child  in  pain  ? 
My  sighs  were  mingled  with  His  breaths  1 
Yet,  though  I  died  a  thousand  deaths, 

A  thousand  times  a  thousandfold, 
With  Him,  my  babe,  upon  the  Cross, 

My  bloody  sweats  are  never  told, 
And  still  the  world's  gain  is  my  loss." 

Has  she  not  suffered,  has  not  died, 
With  every  creature  crucified? 

"  The  hallowed  light  of  Mary's  eyes 

Within  my  bosom  never  dies. 

The  learned  Faust,  for  all  his  pride, 
Was  saved  by  Gretchen — glorified — 
To  God,  his  master,  thrice  denied. 

Love's  smallest  holy  offices 

When  have  I  shirked  them,  even  these? 

From  the  grey  dawn  when  time  began 

To  the  Crimean  battle-field, 
By  every  wounded  soldier's  side 

With  cool  and  soothing  hands  I  kneeled." 

She  is  the  good  Samaritan 
Upon  life's  every  battle-field. 


THE  PLAINT  OF  EVE  95 

"  The  secret  book  of  Beauty  was 
Unlocked  through  me  to  Phidias. 
Petrarcha's  dream  and  Raphael's, 
Rossetti's  blessed  damozels, 

And  all  men's  visions  live  in  me. 
The  shadow  queens  of  Maeterlinck, 
Clothed  with  my  soft  flesh,  cross  the  brink 

Of  utter  unreality. 
Rautendelein  and  Juliet, 
Who  shall  their  wistful  smile  forget? 
The  leader  of  my  boyish  band 
I  rule  in  Neverneverland." 

Hers  is  the  sweetest  voice  in  France, 
And  hers  the  sob  that  like  a  lance 
Has  pierced  the  heart  of  Italy. 

"  With  stylus,  brush  and  angelot, 
I  seize  life's  pulses,  fierce  and  hot. 
In  Greece,  a  suzerain  of  song, 

The  swallow  was  my  singing  mate, 
My  lyric  sisters  still  prolong 

My    strain    more    strange    than    sea    or 

fate. 

Though  Shakespeare's  sonnets,  sweet  as  wine, 
Were  not  more  *  sugared  '  than  were  mine, 
Ye  who  with  myrtle  crown  my  brow, 
Withhold  the  laurel  even  now." 


96  THE  PLAINT  OF  EVE 

The  world's  intolerable  scorn 
Still  falls  to  every  woman  born. 

"  Strong  to  inspire,  strong  to  please, 

My  love  was  unto  Pericles; 
The  Corsican,  the  demigod 
Whose  feet  upon  the  nations  trod, 
Shrunk  from  my  wit  as  from  a  rod. 

The  number  and  its  secret  train 

Eluded  not  my  restless  brain. 

Beyond  the  ken  of  man  I  saw, 

With  Colon's  eyes,  America. 
Into  the  heart  of  mystery, 
Of  light  and  earth  I  plunged,  to  me 

The  atom  bared  its  perfect  plot." 

What  gifts  have  we,  that  she  has  not? 

"  Was  I  not  lord  of  life  and  death 
In  Egypt  and  in  Nineveh? 
Clothed  with  Saint  Stephen's  majesty 
My  arm  dealt  justice  mightily. 

Men  that  beheld  me  caught  their  breath 

With  awe.    I  was  Elizabeth. 

I  was  the  Maid  of  God.    Mine  was 

The  sway  of  all  the  Russias. 

What  was  my  guerdon,  mine  to  take? 

A  crown  of  slander,  and  the  stake  1  " 


THE  PLAINT  OF  EVE  97 

How  shall  we  comfort  her,  how  ease 
The  pang  of  thousand  centuries? 

"  Back  from  my  aspiration  hurled, 

I  was  the  harlot  of  the  world. 

The  levelled  walls  of  Troy  confess 

My  devastating  loveliness. 

Upon  my  bosom  burns  the  scar 

Eternal  as  the  sexes  are. 

I  was  Prince  Borgia's  concubine, 

Phryne  I  was,  and  Messaline, 

And  Circe,  who  turned  men  to  swine." 

But  shall  they  be  forgotten,  then, 
Whom  she  has  turned  from  swine  to  men? 

"  New  creeds  unto  the  world  I  gave, 

But  my  own  self  I  could  not  save. 
For  all  mankind  one  Christ  has  sighed 

Upon  the  Cross,  but  hourly 

Is  every  woman  crucified! 

The  iron  stake  of  destiny 
Is  plunged  into  my  living  side. 

To  Him  that  died  upon  the  Tree 
Love  held  out  trembling  hands  to  lend 

Its  reverential  ministry, 
And  then  came  Death,  the  kindest  friend — 

Shall  my  long  road  to  Calvary, 
And  man's  injustice,  have  no  end?" 


98  THE  PLAINT  OF  EVE 

O  sons  of  mothers,  shall  the  pain 
Of  all  child-bearing  be  in  vain? 
Shall  we  drive  nails,  to  wound  her  thus, 
Into  the  hands  that  fondled  us? 


MARGINALIA 


MARGINALIA 

THE  CANDLE  AND  THE  FLAME 

'TPHIS  poem  preludes  the  present  collection,  because 
its  panoramic  sweep  and  its  progression  from  the 
physical  to  the  metaphysical  strike  the  keynotes  to  which 
my  mind  is  attuned.  To  me  passion  is  always  terrifying 
when  I  remember  that  the  same  fire  that  lights  my  veins 
has  burned  in  so  many  others,  and  will  continue  to  flare 
and  devour  when  only  ash  shall  remain  of  us.  Thus  I 
can  shudderingly  see  in  the  eyes  of  my  paramour  the 
whole  amorous  pageant  of  the  race,  the  strange  and  ter 
rible  history  of  love  from  the  Queen  of  Sheba  to  Paolo 
and  Francesca,  from  Heliogabalus  to  Ludwig  II. 

"  The  legions  marching  from  the  sea 
With  Caesar's  cohorts  sang  of  thee, 

How  thy  fair  head  was  more  to  him 
Than  all  the  land  of  Italy." 

Caesar  seems  to  have  delighted  in  the  curious  pastime  of 
permitting  those  whose  realm  he  had  subjugated  to  van 
quish  his  heart.  Caesarion  bears  witness  to  his  liaison  with 
Cleopatra,  while  a  ribald  couplet  sung  by  his  soldiers 
perpetuates  his  infatuation  for  the  ruler  of  the  sun-kissed 
land  which,  in  after  years,  was  to  give  birth  to  Antinous. 
The  episode  in  which  Nikomedes,  king  of  Bithynia,  figures 

101 


102  MARGINALIA 

has  passed  into  history  from  the  lips  of  the  legions  through 
the  pages  of  Suetonius. 

"  Yea,  in  the  old  days  thou  wast  she 
Who  lured  Mark  Antony  from-  home 
To  death  and  Egypt   ..." 

Caesar  loved  the  Egyptian  with  half  a  heart,  hence  he 
escaped ;  Antony  gave  his  whole  heart,  and  perished. 

"Thou  saw'st  old  Tubal  strike  the  lyre,"  etc. 

Tubal  was  one  of  the  few  Old  Testament  characters  who 
made  life  more  beautiful.  He  was  the  inventor  of  music. 
He  must  also  have  been  the  first  great  lover.  Song, 
among  men,  as  in  the  animal  kingdom,  derives  its  primary 
impetus  from  things  phallic. 

"  Perhaps  the  passions  of  mankind 

Are  but  the  torches  mystical 
Lit  by  some  spirit-hand  to  find 
The  dwelling  of  the  Master-Mind 

That  knows  the  secret  of  it  all, 
In  the  great  darkness  and  the  wind." 

Why  should  not  the  gods,  if  gods  there  be,  experiment 
with  us  as  we  experiment  with  other  creatures?  Much 
to  my  surprise  I  found  a  similar  idea  in  a  recent  book  by 
an  eminent  ecclesiastic. 

THE  PARROT 

11  Tf  VERY  English  singer  seems  to  have  chosen  some  bird 
symbolical  of  his  poetical  temperament.     Keats  the 
nightingale,    Shelley    the    skylark,    Swinburne    the    sea- 
swallow,    Poe   the    raven.      Mr.    Viereck,    appropriately 


MARGINALIA  103 

enough,  chooses  the  parrot."  Lest  some  critic  say  so,  I 
prefer  to  make  this  affirmation  myself.  Parrots  are  not 
only  gorgeous  birds,  but  very  wise  and  very  human.  I 
often  think  that  they  know  far  more  than  they  care  to 
communicate,  that  behind  their  uncouth  articulations 
there  are  wonderful  things  for  which  they  have  not  utter 
ance,  primeval  and  forest  secrets  inherited  through  a  thou 
sand  years,  which  they  may  not  betray. 

"  The  soul-spark  in  all  sentient  things 

Illumes  the  night  of  death  and  brings, 
Remembered,  immortality  ..." 

Matter  is  indestructible.  In  infinity,  as  Nietzsche  saw, 
the  same  combinations  must  inevitably  reoccur.  If  we  can 
only  bridge  the  chasm  between  two  recurrent  combina 
tions,  we  shall  have  achieved  immortality.  If  we  make 
our  lives  intense  and  gorgeously  individual,  we  can  more 
easily  draw  a  bridge  across  the  abyss  of  years.  If  another 
Jesus  is  born,  his  mind  will  automatically  revert  to  the 
Crucifixion,  just  as  Napoleon's  mind  returned  naturally  to 
his  greatest  prototypes,  Alexander  and  Caesar.  While  I 
cannot  conceive  of  individual  immortality,  it  is  equally 
impossible  for  me  to  conceive  of  the  destruction  of  in 
dividuality.  For  any  being,  human  or  otherwise,  possess 
ing  a  spark  of  individuality  there  can  be  to  my  mind  no 
total  extinction.  This  view  is  endorsed  by  the  great 
religions  of  the  world. 

"  Thus  deemed  the  Prophet  on  whose  knee 
The  kitten  slumbered  peacefully, 
And  surely  good  Saint  Francis,  he 
Who  as  his  sister  loved  the  hind." 


104  MARGINALIA 

Mohammed's  regard  for  animals  was  proverbial.  On  one 
occasion  he  is  said  to  have  severed  the  sleeve  of  his  gar 
ment  rather  than  disturb  the  slumber  of  his  feline  fa 
vourite.  Saint  Francis  was  wont  to  preach  sermons  to 
the  birds  of  the  forest  and  the  beasts  of  the  field.  There 
is  a  charming  reference  to  Saint  Francis  in  the  prayer  of 
the  birds  in  the  fourth  act  of  "  Chantecler  ": 

"  Faites-nous  souvenir  de  Saint  Francois  d'Assise, 
Et  qu'il  faut  pardonner  a  Thornine  ses  reseaux 
Parce  qu'un  homme  a  dit :  '  Mes  f  reres  les  oiseaux  ' !  " 

THE  PRISONING  OF  SONG 

TVTACHINERY  has  found  its  singer.  Why  should 
the  phonograph  be  without  honour,  seeing  that  it 
gives  to  "  beauty  audible "  the  immortality  denied  by 
nature?  The  world  would  wear  an  altered  face  if  the 
graves  of  the  Pharaohs  had  voices,  and  if  the  accents  of 
Jesus  Himself  could  still  be  heard  among  men. 

The  vocabulary  of  the  poem  belongs  to  the  literature 
of  the  past,  as  poetic  vocabularies  always  must;  its  spirit 
belongs  to  the  present.  Both  Kipling  and  Whitman  have 
given  us  hints  as  to  the  language  of  the  poetry  of  the 
future,  but  even  in  their  best  work  we  find  some  words 
that  strike  us  as  uncouth  and  that  may  not  be  sanctioned 
by  time. 

GERSUIND 

TN  his  old  age  Charlemagne,  according  to  legend,  was 

enamoured  of  a  girl  who  had  the  body  of  a  child  and 

the   heart   of   a   harlot.      Hauptmann    recently   put   this 

strange  creature  into  one  of  his  plays,  but  I  have  met  the 


MARGINALIA  105 

reincarnation  of  Gersuind.  Who  she  is  I  may  not  tell. 
Where  she  is  I  know  not.  Perhaps  she  has  returned  to 
the  baronial  mansions  of  her  native  land.  Perhaps  she 
languishes  in  some  exotic  gaol,  sunk  to  degradation  beyond 
speech.  Perhaps  she  has  found  peace,  if  peace  there  be, 
in  the  grave. 

"  Lo !  I  have  not  the  strength  divine 

Of  Him  whose  bare  feet  ruled  the  sea  ..." 

This  metaphor  was  suggested  by  a  haunting  line  in 
"  Santa  Teresa  "  by  the  late  Catulle  Mendes. 

"  And  ere  God's  hosts  are  marshalled  bright 

And  the  last  dreaded  veil  withdrawn   ..." 

Doomsday  has  always  had  for  me  poetically  a  curious 
fascination — perhaps  the  influence  of  a  Puritanic  environ 
ment! 


NERO  IN  CAPRI 

TV/TY  history  is  as  good  as  Shakespeare's  geography. 
Nero  may  never  have  been  in  Capri,  the  haunt  of 
Tiberius  and  his  ghastly  vices,  but  he  should  have  been 
there.  Nero  in  Capri  is  Nero  satiated.  There  is  in  this 
poem  the  despair  of  physical  passion.  Voluptuousness 
pressed  to  the  uttermost  limit  touches  upon  the  spiritual. 
We  are  ready  for  the  cloak  of  the  Stoic  or  the  cross  of 
the  Christian  when  we  realize  that  ultimate  satisfaction 
always  betrays  and  eludes  us. 

"  The  books  of  Elephantis  tell 
Only  the  fortunes  that  befell,"  etc. 


io6  MARGINALIA 

The  shameful  books  of  Elephantis,  as  Wilde  calls  them, 
favourite  literary  pabulum  of  Tiberius,  were  unfortunately 
lost  in  the  chaos  of  the  nations  that  marked  the  fall  of 
the  Roman  Empire,  but  we  may  imagine  that  Nero  read 
them  and  that,  like  all  things,  they  bored  him.  .  .  . 

"  Bring  me  the  yearning  of  the  dreams 
Of  all  the  young  men  amorous!  "  etc. 

The  baffled  voluptuary  seeks  appeasement  by  the  multipli 
cation  of  stimuli.  He  desires  to  thrill  with  the  sex  vibra 
tion  of  the  entire  universe.  His  search  for  new  sensations 
ends  in  a  form  of  Pansexualism.  Here  Nero  and  Whit 
man,  the  Pantheist,  meet  on  common  ground.  In  this 
poem  physical  passion  reaches  its  ultimate  climax. 

A  BALLAD  OF  MONTMARTRE 

T  ONCE  made  the  reckless  remark  that  the  three  men  I 
most  admired  were  Christ,  Napoleon,  and  Oscar  Wilde, 
each  a  martyr  to  his  creed,  the  ethical,  the  dynamic,  and 
the  aesthetic.  After  calm  reflection  I  cannot  find  three 
men  who  typify  more  perfectly  the  great  intellectual  and 
temperamental  world-currents.  Recently  in  Paris  I  visited 
the  graves  of  Napoleon  and  Oscar  Wilde.  As  Jerusalem 
was  too  far  away,  I  paid  my  devotions  to  the  founder  of 
Christianity,  not  at  Notre  Dame,  but  at  the  tomb  of 
another  intellectual  of  the  race  of  Christ — Heinrich 
Heine. 

It  seemed  a  pity  that  Wilde  and  Heine,  his  spiritual 
progenitor,  never  met  in  the  flesh.  For  that  reason  I  took 
the  liberty  to  introduce  their  ghosts  to  each  other.  Wilde, 
no  less  than  Heine,  belonged  to  a  brilliant  and  down- 


MARGINALIA  107 

trodden  race.  Both  were  outcasts  from  their  people,  both 
died  in  exile  in  Paris.  Both  were  Pagans,  yet  both  had 
comprehended  the  Man  of  Sorrows.  Wilde,  by  the  way, 
hated  the  Jews,  but  when  we  are  food  for  the  worm 
we  may  find  food  for  reflection. 

("I  loved  them  not  on  earth,  but  men 
Change  somehow,  having  died,") 

as  Oscar  philosophically  acknowledges  in  the  poem. 

Oscar  Wilde  was  originally  buried  in  Bagneux  Ceme 
tery;  subsequently  his  remains  were  removed  to  Pere  La 
Chaise.  Having  been  disturbed  in  his  slumber  once,  we 
can  well  imagine  Wilde's  sleepless  spirit  wandering  in 
search  of  congenial  companionship  to  Montmartre,  where 
Heine  was  laid  to  rest.  My  pilgrimage  to  the  grave  of 
Wilde  was  not  without  piquancy,  for  as  Elsa  Barker,  the 
poet,  reminded  me  as  we  stood  by  the  little  mound,  I 
was  the  first  who  told  in  print  the  story  of  Wilde's  still 
being  among  the  living.  The  canard,  for  such  it  seems  to 
be,  has  been  revived  from  time  to  time  in  the  Sunday 
magazines  of  the  daily  papers.  When  I  first  wrote  it, 
wishing  it  to  be  true,  my  article,  rejected  as  "  too  yellow  " 
by  the  New  York  World  and  the  New  York  Journal, 
was  printed  by  Jeannette  Gilder  in  the  sedate  Critic.  In 
my  youth  I  have  at  times  been  accused  of  being  a  heavy 
borrower  from  Wilde.  Rendering  unto  Oscar  what  is 
Oscar's,  the  protest  against  psychopathic  inquiry  into  his 
life  may  repay  my  debt. 

"  Because  I  drew  from  Shakespeare's  heart 
The  secret  of  his  love.   ..." 


loS  MARGINALIA 

See  Wilde's  "  Portrait  of  Mr.  W.  H.";  also  "  De  Pro- 
fundis."  "  Those  who  have  the  artistic  temperament  go 
into  exile  with  Dante  and  learn  how  salt  is  the  bread  of 
others,  and  how  steep  the  stairs;  they  catch  for  a  moment 
the  serenity  and  the  calm  of  Goethe.  .  .  .  Out  of  Shake 
speare's  '  Sonnets '  they  draw,  to  their  own  hurt  it  may  be, 
the  secret  of  his  love  ..." 

A  BALLAD  OF  KING  DAVID 

1T\AVID,   Bath-Sheba,   and  Jonathan   make  a  curious 
trio.     This  poem  reveals  an  unsuspected  nuance  in 
the  interpretation  of  the  emotional  triangle. 

THE  BALLAD  OF  THE  GOLDEN  BOY 

T  E  GALLIENNE  has  celebrated  the  Golden  Girl. 
Why  should  not  I  sing  the  Golden  Boy  ?  The  poem 
was  suggested  to  me  by  a  well-known  anecdote  of  Leo 
nardo  da  Vinci  which  I  discovered  in  a  book  on  hygiene. 
Da  Vinci,  unacquainted  with  the  action  of  colour  on  the 
skin,  stained  a  lad  from  head  to  foot  with  gold  for  a 
Florentine  pageant.  The  poor  lad  died  of  suffocation 
within  an  hour,  but  to  me  his  fate  seems  not  unenviable. 

"  Upon  his  lips  curled  wistfully 

The  smile  that  Mona  Lisa  had." 

It  pleases  me  to  imagine  that  he  may  have  been  a  brother 
of  that  Mona  Lisa  whose  curious  smile  has  come  down  to 
us  through  the  ages.  Maybe  her  smile  darkened  the  lips 
of  the  lad  when  he  heard  his  doom  .  .  . 

"  His  life  was  as  a  splash  of  gold 

Against  the  plumage  of  the  night" 


MARGINALIA  109 

Can  any  life  be  more  wonderful  ?    Let  this  be  my  epitaph, 
if  I  die  before  thirty.    After  thirty  nothing  matters  .    .   . 

THE  CYNIC'S  CREDO 


nPHIS  poem  embodies  an  eternally  recurrent  human 
mood,  —  not  a  philosophy  of  life  as  such,  but  a 
philosophy  of  life  as  seen  from  a  certain  angle.  There 
certainly  are  times  when  the  gift  of  self-analysis,  the  gift 
of  thought,  seems  a  curse.  God,  we  are  told,  is  knowl 
edge.  We  often  are  most  unhappy  when  we  are  most  like 
God!  God  perhaps  is  not  happy.  .  .  .  Hardy,  Shaw, 
Bergson,  many  modern  poets  and  thinkers,  have  sub 
stituted  for  an  all-perfect,  complacently  Hebraic  deity,  a 
world-spirit,  imperfect  and  struggling.  The  modern 
mind,  more  anthropomorphic  than  the  ancient  Hebrews', 
substitutes  for  Jehovah  a  celestial  Hamlet. 

LIFE 

T    IFE   is   death,   death   is   life  —  the   eternal   antinomy. 
'  Truth  can  speak   only  in  self-contradiction. 
Death  must  love  life,   because   he   destroys  it,   as  the 
female  spider  destroys  and  devours  its  mate. 

IRON  PASSION 

"  Come  unto  me  with  cruel,  loveless  eyes, 
O  iron  passion  of  the  lords  of  song!  " 

'  I  AHE  wish  was  fulfilled,  for  the  space  of  a  poem,  by 
the  Little  Maid  of  Sappho  whose  personality,  per 
verse  and  wistful,  furnishes  the  substance  for  a  poem  that 
appears  on  another  page. 

"Who,  hating,  loved  that  Lesbia  ..." 


no  MARGINALIA 

ff  Odi  et  amo  " — the  bitter  cry  of  Catullus.  The  swan 
must  die  to  sing  his  song.  So  the  soul  maybe  must  die 
more  deaths  than  one  for  the  sake  of  a  sonnet  .  .  . 

INHIBITION 

T^REUD,  the  great  Austrian  psychologist,  has  taught 
us  to  regard  the  subconscious  mind  as  the  guardian 
posited  between  consciousness  and  the  lowest  strata  of  the 
mind.  Horrible  passions,  racial  memories  destructive  to 
modern  civilization,  seethe  unknown  to  us  in  the  mystic 
abysses  of  our  being.  The  "  guardian  of  the  nether  mind  " 
bars  their  entry  into  the  conscious  and  transforms  and 
transmutes  them  before  they  translate  themselves  into  con 
sciousness.  This  same  inhibitory  impulse,  however,  often 
comes  into  play  when  it  is  not  called  for.  Something  that 
we  can  hardly  define  frequently  seals  our  lips  when  we 
would  speak  of  "  tender  things  "  and  bare  our  souls  to 
those  we  love.  Afterwards  we  regret  the  kind  words  we 
left  unsaid,  silenced  by  an  incomprehensible  mental  ma 
chinery  set  in  motion  by  levers  beyond  our  reach. 

ON  BROADWAY 

"  Luxurious-cushioned  wheels  a  revel-train 

Where  kings  of  song  with  weary  feet  have  trod, 
Where  Poe,  sad  priest  to  Beauty  and  to  Pain, 
Bore  through  the  night  the  Vision  and  the  God." 

for  want  of  carfare,  more  than  once  walked  the 
long  distance  from  lower  Broadway  to  his  home  in 
Fordham  on  foot. 

"  And  yet,  perhaps,  in  this  assemblage  vast, 

In  some  poor  heart  sounds  the  enraptured  chord,"  etc. 


MARGINALIA  in 

A  poet,  a  human  derelict,  sometimes  calls  on  me  at  the 
office.  His  breath  is  drenched  with  whiskey  and  his  soul 
with  music.  He  never  has  any  money  when  he  comes  to 
see  me,  and  I  never  have  any  when  he  goes.  I  take  the  same 
supercilious  interest  in  him  which  Poe's  more  prosperous 
contemporaries  may  have  bestowed  upon  Poe  himself  when, 
drunk  and  bedraggled,  the  poet  invaded  their  luxurious 
homes.  Yet,  who  can  tell?  Perhaps  this  man's  name 
will  ring  through  the  ages  on  wings  of  thunder  even  as 
Poe's,  when  we,  to  whom  fortune  has  been  kinder,  are  as 
completely  immersed  in  oblivion  as  those  who  snubbed 
America's  greatest  poet.  I  am  sometimes  seized  with  the 
fear  of  Baudelaire — the  idol  heedlessly  dragged  to  the 
junk-heap  may  be  the  true  god  after  all  ... 

THE  UNKNOWN  GODDESS 

"  Out  of  the  night,  O  Goddess,  send  a  sign 
And  prove  to  me  you  are  indeed  divine !  " 

T"\ID  she  answer  this  prayer — she  remains  a  mystery 
to  me  yet — I  might  perish  as  did  Semele  when  Jove 
appeared  to  her  in  the  guise  of  that  golden  rain.  At  any 
rate,  my  unknown  goddess,  having  by  this  time,  possibly, 
become  fat  as  well  as  discriminating,  may  mean  to  save 
me  the  loss  of  one  more  illusion. 

I  have  more  than  one  friend  in  the  region  topographic 
ally  made  definite  in  these  lines.  Each  has  in  her  way 
paved  my  path  to  ecstasy,  but  no  thrill  seems  like  that 
brought  me  by  the  enduring  mystery  of  the  identity  of  my 
Unknown  Goddess.  To  think  that  this  sort  of  thing  is 
all  we  poor  moderns  can  hope  for  as  a  substitute  for  that 
veil  of  Isis  which  so  inspired  the  nation  on  the  Nile! 


ii2  MARGINALIA 

THE  VIRGIN  SPHINX 

'HPHIS  was  written  in  answer  to  a  sonnet  by  Muriel 
Rice,  published  originally  in  The  Forum. 

"  Lord  of  the  brimming  thoughts  and  burning  brain, 
Proud-hearted  minstrel  of  resounding  sin, 
Can  naught  allay  the  ecstasy  within? 
Thine  eager  eyes  wax  lurid  as  they  strain 
Hellward,  to  view  the  beauty  of  her  pain. 
Thine  alchemy  draws  music  from  her  din. 
Speak, — for  thy  demon  wills  it, — what  hath  been, 
Crime,  glory,  death;  for  everything  is  vain. 

Torches  that  flare  like  to  the  bosom-heaves 
Of  sinful  woman  waiting  tp  be  won; 
And  hungry  men  with  sateless  eyes  that  stun 
Resistance  back,  till  Christ  in  heaven  grieves: — 
Yet  never  once  the  moon  between  the  leaves 
Nor  winds  that  rush  to  meet  the  rising  sun." 

"  Thine  is  her  secret  whom  the  Serpent  wooed, 
And  his  who  kindled  passion  in  a  stone." 

See  "  Before  the  Fall  "  and  "  Pygmalion  and  Galatea," 
both  in  Miss  Rice's  "  Poems." 

THE  NUNS 

"I  X  7ITH  all  its  crudity  and  nudity  of  technique,  the 
painting  by  Dorothy  Rice  which  inspired  these 
lines  exercises  a  ghastly  and  weird  fascination.  The  young 
artist  merely  shows  four  nuns  in  a  darkened  chapel  staring 
crazily  into  space.  What  they  see  she  has  not  revealed. 
This  is  the  picture  cast  upon  the  screen  of  my  mind. 

"  Called  in  what  crevice  of  thy  tortured  brain, 
Prodigious  child,  from  nothingness  to  pain  ?  " 


MARGINALIA  113 

One  wonders  out  of  what  cerebral  crevices,  where  pre 
natal  nightmares  linger,  the  painter,  almost  a  child  in 
years,  has  tortured  such  figures  into  the  pain  of  being  ... 

QUEEN  LILITH 

T  ILITH  (or  Lailith),  "  the  first  wife  of  Adam,"  was 
the  sister  of  Lucifer.  She  was  a  goddess  among  the 
Phoenicians.  The  Bible,  however,  speaks  of  her  only  once 
as  the  spirit  of  the  night.  In  the  tangled  skein  of  religions 
she  was  lost,  until  rediscovered  by  Goethe  and  the  English 
Pre-Raphaelites.  But  even  unresuscitated  by  the  poets, 
Lilith  would  have  reasserted  her  fascination.  For  Lilith, 
like  Lucifer,  is  immortal.  She  lives  in  the  heart  of  every 
woman,  as  Lucifer  lives  in  the  heart  of  every  man.  The 
Hebrews  speak  of  Lucifer  as  "  the  Other."  Lilith  is  al 
ways  "  the  Other  Woman."  One  man's  Eve  is  another 
man's  Lilith  .  .  . 

"  Whence  springs  that  hunger  beyond  the  flesh 
That  only  the  flesh  can  appease  in  me?  " 

Lilith,  like  Lucifer,  is  a  rebel.  Not  vice  attracts  her, 
but  indomitable  intellectual  curiosity.  She  transcends  sex 
even  in  her  sex  aberrations.  By  this  sign  Lucifer  knows 
her  for  his  kindred ;  by  this  sign  she  acclaims  him  brother. 

"  I  hunted  thee  where  the  Ibis  nods, 

From  the  Brocken's  crag  to  the  Upas  Tree  ..." 

We  may  presume  that  Lilith  took  part  in  strange  phallic 
rites  in  Egypt;  in  Germany  she  was  an  enchantress  pay 
ing  homage  to  Lucifer  at  the  Witches'  Sabbath;  and  in 


ii4  MARGINALIA 

Java,  transformed  into  a  tree,  she  gave  monstrous  dreams 
and  death  to  the  wayfarer. 

"  My  lonesomeness  was  as  great  as  God's, 

When  He  cast  us  out  from  His  Holy  See." 

Lucifer  and  his  sister  Lilith  alone  of  all  the  angels  were 
the  peers  of  God.  When  He  had  hurled  brother  and 
sister  to  bottomless  perdition,  He  must  have  been  lone 
some  indeed,  surrounded  only  by  the  servile  throng  of 
meek  submissive  angels.  Perhaps  the  reconstructed  Roman 
Catholic  heaven,  with  the  addition  of  the  Trinity  and 
Mary,  Queen  of  Angels,  was  the  product  of  the  solitude 
of  the  Almighty.  Unable  to  find  a  companion,  He 
trisected  Himself,  and,  having  lost  Lilith,  borrowed  a 
woman  of  human  birth  to  reign  in  His  kingdom.  This 
is  not  theology,  but  what  may  be  presumed  to  be  Lucifer's 
interpretation  of  celestial  evolution. 

("How  art  thou  fallen,  Gabriel!") 

To  Lucifer's  mind  it  is  not  he  that  is  fallen,  but  the 
angels,  once  his  mates,  who  humbly  bow  to  Jehovah. 
The  idea  of  the  Sons  of  Heaven  telling  beads  and  murmur 
ing  earth-made  prayers  in  honour  of  a  lowly  Jewish  maid 
must  seem  the  climax  of  humiliation  and  abasement  to 
this  Uranian  rebel. 


2.  SAMUEL,  I.  26. 

T^RIENDSHIPS,  like  love,  are  predetermined.    There 
must  be  some  physiological  and  spiritual  law  of  affec 
tion  that  can  be  expressed — and  perhaps  will  be  some  day 
— in  an  algebraic  equation. 


MARGINALIA  115 

ENIGMA 

NIGMA  never  spoke.    The  curse  of  Eve,  the  silence 


E 


of  a  thousand  years,  was  upon  her.  Not  every  woman 
is  a  Sphinx  without  riddle.  The  silence  of  Enigma 
haunted  me.  I  have  always  been  attracted  by  the  Sphinx. 
Let  me  refer  to  the  finale  of  Nineveh  for  a  moment. 
There  I  foregathered  the  Sphinx  who  cast  the  spell  over 
CEdipus,  the  Sphinx  who  was  inscrutable  to  Ptolemy  and 
the  Sphinx  who  purples  Babylon.  One  poem  resulted. 
The  ancients  would  have  made  many.  But  ours  is  an 
age  of  Edisons,  not  of  Platos.  The  lines  I  made  were  to 
have  been  my  farewell  to  the  theme  which,  I  find  now  to 
my  cost,  follows  me  like  that  beggarman  who  forever 
above  crowds  waved  his  lean  arm  at  Whitman. 

A  LITTLE  MAID  OF  SAPPHO 

'T'HE  Little  Maid  of  Sappho  lifts  her  quizzical  head 
first  in  a  chapter  entitled  "  Some  Women  "  in  my 
Confessions  of  a  Barbarian.  She  was  a  little  girl  I 
met  in  Berlin  several  years  ago.  "  Your  arms,"  I  said 
of  her,  "were  lilies;  you  were  frail,  childlike;  but  your 
eyes  peered  with  demoniacal  passion  into  ancient  abysses 
glittering  with  putrefaction.  The  thought  of  you,  little 
girl,  fills  me  with  vague  unrest.  You  might  have  been  my 
fate :  you  were  hardly  an  episode.  Perhaps  we  shall  meet 
again.  But  you  will  then  be  beyond  salvation."  We  did 
meet  again.  She  knew  my  poem  by  heart,  but  somehow 
she  had  ceased  to  impress  me. 

The  poem  may  be  divided  artistically  into  four  sections. 
First,  there  is  the  appeal  to  the  girl's  passion.  When  this 
is  vain,  the  poet  plays  on  her  vanity.  Being  loved  of 


n6  MARGINALIA 

Sappho,  she  is  still  unmoved.  The  poet  then  exhorts  her 
feminine  perversity. 

"  Incite  my  passion,  my  embraces  flee — 
And  never,  never,  never  come  to  me !  " 

When  this  avails  not,  he  appeals  to  the  mother  in  her: 
"  I  only  know  I  need  you  more  than  she   ..." 

That  may  be  a  psychological  blunder.  It  is  the  mother 
who  first  dies  in  those  who  caught  "  stray  breaths  of 
Sapphic  song  that  blew  through  Mytilene."  And  yet  I 
wonder  if  even  perverted  passion  can  entirely  extirpate  the 
mother-instinct  in  woman? 

CHILDREN  OF  LILITH 

f  I^HE  division  of  the  world  into  two  sexes,  according 
to  modern  psychology,  is  as  arbitrary  as  it  is  mis 
leading.  Male  and  female  elements  are  curiously  mixed 
in  the  same  individuals.  Besides  those  in  whom  masculine 
and  feminine  characteristics  predominate  mentally  and 
physically,  there  are  also,  to  quote  the  noted  neurologist, 
Dr.  Magnus  Hirschfeld  of  Berlin,  individuals  who,  spirit 
ually  at  least,  constitute,  what  may  be  termed,  a  "  transi 
tional  sex."  If  we  re-read  history  in  the  light  of  our  new- 
gained  knowledge,  we  shall  make  startling  discoveries. 
In  "  Aiander  "  and  "  Aiogyne  "  (see  Nineveh)  I  have 
depicted  the  Eternal  Man  and  the  Eternal  Woman. 
Here  I  trace  the  third,  transitional  sex,  through  the  alleys 
of  time. 

As  Villon  has  sung  a  ballad  of  dead  ladies,  I  dedicate 
to  him  this  ballad  of  dead  lads.     Sporus,  the  mignon  of 


MARGINALIA  117 

Nero,  was  responsible  for  the  burning  of  Rome ;  Heliogab- 
alus  smothered  his  guests  with  roses;  and  a  Gallic  poet 
tells  the  pitiful  story  of  the  boy-emperors  of  Rome,  who, 
without  exception,  came  to  a  tragic  and  untimely  end. 

"  Where  is  that  city  by  the  Nile, 

Reared  by  an  emperor's  bronze  distress?" 

Antinoe,  reared  by  Hadrian  in  commemoration  of  the 
young  Bithynian,  Antinous,  still  exists,  but  of  its  former 
splendour  not  a  trace  remains. 

"  .    .    .he  whom  Jesus  loved 

Was  not  the  rock  on  which  He  built." 

The  Bible  distinctly  states  of  John  that  it  was  he  "  whom 
Jesus  loved,"  yet,  with  divine  wisdom,  the  Messiah  en 
trusted  His  keys  not  to  him,  but  to  Peter.  For  Peter, 
though  thrice  a  traitor  to  the  Lord,  was  made  of  sterner 
stuff  than  the  younger  disciple  whose  romantic  and  un 
stable  temperament  was  not  adamantine. 

LOVE'S  AFTERMATH 

"  At  last  I  understand 
Who  with  untrembling  hand 
Destroy  a  lovely  shell, 
To  save  the  soul  from  hell!  " 

E  reaction  of  the  flesh  which  has  made  murderers 
and  saints.   .    .    . 

THE  SINGING  VAMPIRE 

'  INHERE  is  something  of  the  vampire  in  every  woman; 

there   is   also    something   of    the   vampire   in    every 

artist.     When  both  meet  in  the  artist-woman,  then,   as 

Shaw  enunciates  in  "  Man  and  Superman,"  woe  to  the 


ii8  MARGINALIA 

male!  But  when  the  artist-woman  meets  the  artist-man, 
catastrophe  is  inevitable.  This  poem  exemplifies  in  tragic 
verse  what  Shaw  tells  in  comic  prose. 

"Why  slay  this  stainless  Hyacinth?" 

This  line  has  been  curiously  misinterpreted.  Hyacinth  is, 
of  course,  not  the  character  who  dramatically  upbraids 
his  erstwhile  mistress,  but  a  young  friend  of  the  speaker. 
Shakespeare  might  have  addressed  these  words  to  the  Dark 
Lady  when  he  beheld  his  "  better  angel  "  in  her  sinister 
toils. 


THE  MASTER  KEY 

/COMPARE  Shakespeare's  "Sonnets,"  especially  144 
and  29.  When,  "  in  disgrace  with  fortune  and 
men's  eyes,"  Shakespeare  "  all  alone  beweeps  his  outcast 
state,"  he  is  least  admirable.  A  wholesome  dash  of 
authentic  paganism  would  have  rendered  his  heart-history 
less  tragic.  We  must  not  only  return  good  for  evil  as 
Christ  taught,  but  we  must  turn  evil  into  good,  and 
"  from  hell's  lees  still  crush  the  goodly  wine." 

THE  PILGRIM 

TV/FAY  one  not  save  a  soul  by  subjecting  it  to  the 
uttermost  degradation,  by  hammering  upon  the 
spirit  until  one  strikes  fire?  If  evil  is  as  essential  a  part 
of  the  cosmic  scheme  as  good,  may  not  redemption  be 
wrought  through  evil?  The  true  Saviour  may  be  Anti- 
Christ  . 


MARGINALIA  119 

THE  PRINCESS  WITH  THE  GOLDEN  VEIL 

"'T'HE  VAMPIRE,"  a  dramatization  of  my  novel, 
The  House  of  the  Vampire,  had  a  "  run  "  in 
New  York,  but,  as  a  metropolitan  journal  remarked,  "  it 
wasn't  exactly  a  Marathon."  Counting  Chicago  and 
Saint  Louis,  there  were  in  all  one  hundred  performances 
of  the  play.  My  collaborator  in  the  dramatization,  Edgar 
Allan  Woolf,  introduced  a  number  of  distinctly  human 
features  not  contained  in  the  novel.  This  little  ballad 
which  the  hero  reads  as  the  curtain  falls  in  the  first  act 
is  one  of  my  few  contributions  to  the  dramatization.  My 
friends  insisted  that  the  verses  were  not  without  merit. 
They  are  reprinted  here  to  refute  their  assertion.  The 
poem  is  indebted  for  whatever  charm  it  may  have  possessed 
in  the  play  to  the  imaginative  rendering  of  John  E. 
Kellerd  who  impersonated  the  Vampire. 

JOAN'S  FAREWELL 

IT^ROM  my  translation  of  Schiller's  "  Maid  of  Orleans," 
produced  June  22d,  1909,  at  the  Harvard  Stadium, 
for  the  benefit  of  the  Germanic  Museum,  by  Maude 
Adams.  Inasmuch  as  I  was  dealing  with  a  classic,  I 
was  constrained  to  preserve  fidelity  to  the  text.  This  is 
one  of  the  reasons  why  I  have  not  published  my  version 
in  book  form.  The  translator  must  almost  invariably  be, 
what  the  Italians  call  him,  a  traitor.  One  can  rarely  be 
true  to  the  original,  and  at  the  same  time  be  true  to  the 
essence  of  poetry.  I  was  glad  to  be  able  to  serve,  however 
humbly,  the  mission  of  interpreting  the  spirit  of  the  land 
of  my  birth  to  the  land  of  my  choice  and  adoption.  This 


120  MARGINALIA 

monologue,  known  to  every  German  school-child  through 
out  the  world,  is  probably  the  most  famous  in  the  entire 
play. 

CHANTECLER'S  ODE  TO  THE  SUN 

"piHANTECLER,"  as  a  German  playwright  wittily 
remarked  to  me,  was  everywhere  a  "  successful 
failure."  This  was  due,  not  to  lack  of  merit  in  the  play, 
but  to  the  over-inflated  expectations  of  the  public  through 
an  advertising  campaign  waged  with  unequalled  audacity 
for  a  period  of  several  years.  After-years  will  give  to 
Rostand's  play  its  just  recognition.  His  "  Hymn  to  the 
Sun,"  which  I  have  attempted  to  render  freely  in  English, 
will  be  remembered  for  its  curious  mixture  of  optimism 
and  pessimism.  The  author's  philosophy  throughout  is 
constructive  and  cheerful,  but  the  last  verse, 

"  Save  for  thy  love,  O  Mother  Sun, 

All  things  would  seem  but  what  they  are!  " 

betrays  his  inherent  sadness.  He  is  an  optimist  without 
illusions  .  .  . 

I  have  substituted  iambic  tetrameters  for  the  Alex 
andrines  so  dear  to  Gallic  ears,  for  we  cannot  employ 
the  characteristic  French  verse  form  in  English  without 
cramping  the  meaning  and  despoiling  the  music. 

THE  BREEZE 


"  The  Jesters,"  a  play  by  Zamagois,  charm 
ingly  interpreted  both  by  Sarah  Bernhardt  and  Maude 
Adams.  Here,  in  contradistinction  to  my  translation  of 
"  Joan's  Farewell,"  I  have  indulged  in  every  imaginable 


MARGINALIA  121 

license.  I  have  attempted  to  rewrite,  not  to  translate,  the 
French  poem. 

ATTAR  OF  SONG 

"  Death  in  its  shadow,  dreams  the  Upas  tree  ..." 

those   who    dream   under   the    Upas   tree,    death 
comes  over  night. 

"...  with  its  dew,  as  sugar  sucks  the  bee, 
I  have  enriched  the  honeycomb  of  rhyme." 

The  evil  in  art  needs  no  justification  beyond  this.  The 
bee  may  gather  honey  from  poison  flowers,  the  poet  attar 
of  song  from  his  own  sins  and  loves  and  the  sins  and  loves 
of  the  world.  The  poet  alone  may  safely  dream  under  the 
Upas  tree  .  .  . 

THE  BURIED  CITY 

A  RE  not  all  our  lives  reared  on  buried  cities,  sick  with 
•^^  the  ashes  of  dead  memories,  ancestral  and  individual  ? 
Man  is  never  a  unit  physically  and  spiritually;  we  are 
made  up  of  many  layers,  often  but  ill-adjusted  in  their 
mutual  relations. 

"  And  like  the  peal  of  an  accursed  bell 
Thy  voice  call  ghosts  of  dead  things  back  from  hell  ..." 

Even  as  the  peal  of  a  bell  rung  by  the  worshippers  of 
Satan,  chanting  in  a  deserted  chapel  the  litany  of  damna 
tion,  may  reach  the  fiends  of  hell,  so  some  trivial  sound 
or  the  voice  of  one  we  love  may  conjure  up  unexpectedly 
from  the  substrata  of  consciousness  shades  of  the  hell 
within  us  . 


122  MARGINALIA 

THE  IDOL 

are  all  idol  worshippers  in  our  youth.  I,  too, 
have  worshipped  strange  gods  in  my  day.  There  is 
a  Book  of  Idols  in  Nineveh.  But  the  Sign  of  the  Beast 
is  always  there. 

Why  is  it  that  the  supernatural  when  it  enters  our 
lives  always  smacks  of  black  magic?  Judging  by  some 
of  his  stories  in  "  The  Innocence  of  Father  Brown,"  Gil 
bert  K.  Chesterton,  who  seems  to  be  on  more  familiar 
terms  with  the  Almighty  than  any  other  living  writer, 
is  actually  afraid  of  fairies.  .  .  . 

TRIUMPHATRIX,  MONADS,  FINALE 

PHE  magic  of  virginity  may  conquer  the  memory  and 
the  magic  of  Circe,  but  doubt  is  even  stronger  than 
love.  The  soul,  as  Leibnitz  has  said,  is  a  "  monad,"  a 
"  house  without  windows."  There  can  be  no  perfect 
understanding  between  two  beings,  and  happiness  comes 
to  us  only  when  we  are  prepared  to  accept  life's  imperfect 
compromise.  Perhaps  somewhere  in  Infinity  we  may  be 
come  one  and  perfect.  Love,  rather  than  wisdom,  may 
lead  the  way,  though  the  finale  may  be  sad  disillusion. 
Love  may  take  wings  and  lose  its  way  ere  the  goal  be 
reached.  Besides,  the  goal,  too,  may  be  a  figment  of 
dreams  .  .  . 

A  NEW  ENGLAND  BALLAD 

'  I  *HIS  poem  embodies  a  Hellenic  conception  of  Christ. 
My  Christ,  like  the  Aryan  Christ  of  Houston  Stewart 
Chamberlain  ("  The  Foundations  of  the  Nineteenth  Cen 
tury"),  is  a  joyous  figure  pointing  not  to  death,  but  to 


MARGINALIA  123 

life.  "  Many  founders  of  religions,"  declares  Chamber 
lain,  "  have  imposed  penance  in  respect  to  food  upon  them 
selves  and  their  disciples;  not  so  Christ;  He  emphasizes 
particularly  that  He  had  not  fasted  like  John,  but  had  so 
lived  that  men  called  Him  '  a  glutton  and  a  wine-bibber.' 
.  .  .  What  Buddha  teaches  is,  so  to  speak,  a  physical 
process;  it  is  the  actual  extinction  of  the  physical 
and  intellectual  being;  whoever  wishes  to  be  redeemed 
must  take  the  three  vows  of  chastity,  poverty,  and 
obedience.  In  the  case  of  Christ  we  find  nothing  similar: 
He  attends  marriages,  He  declares  wedlock  to  be  a  holy 
ordinance  of  God,  and  even  the  errors  of  the  flesh  He 
judges  so  leniently  that  He  himself  has  not  a  word 
of  condemnation  for  the  adulteress;  He  indeed  speaks  of 
wealth  as  rendering  the  '  conversion  '  of  the  will  more  dif 
ficult — as,  for  example,  when  He  says  that  it  is  more  diffi 
cult  for  a  rich  man  to  enter  into  that  kingdom  of  God 
which  lies  within  us  than  for  a  camel  to  go  through  the 
eye  of  a  needle,  but  He  immediately  adds — and  this  is  the 
characteristic  and  decisive  part — '  the  things  which  are 
impossible  with  men  are  possible  with  God.'  ' 

Christ,  Chamberlain  might  have  added,  suffered 
woman  to  anoint  His  forehead  with  spikenard,  and  to 
dry  His  weary  feet  with  the  caress  of  her  hair.  Jesus 
to  me  is  the  beautiful  youth  who  confounded  the  scribes 
in  the  temple,  not  the  sorrowful  bearded  figure  of  the  last 
movement.  Wilde,  too,  in  "  De  Profundis,"  dwells  on 
the  Greek  aspect  of  Christ.  The  synthesis  of  Greek  and 
Christian  always  has  been  to  me  a  subject  of  fascination. 
I  can  trace  the  growth  of  the  idea  in  my  own  work. 
More  than  seven  years  ago,  in  the  final  stanza  of 


i24  MARGINALIA 

"  Hadrian  "  (Gedichte,  1904)  this  conception  is  clearly 
foreshadowed. 

"  Where  unto  Beauty  sacrifice  is  given 

There  let  us  kneel  to  worship  and  adore, 
Whether  its  star  transcendent  rose  in  heaven 
O'er  Grecian  hill  or  Galilean  shore." 

In  "  Before  the  Cross  "  and  "  Provocatio  ad  Mariam  " 
(Nineveh)  the  pendulum  swings,  and  my  spirit  turns 
again  to  Golgotha.  "  Spring  "  speaks  of  a  healthy  pagan 
reaction.  I  am  again  a  denizen  of  Greece.  But,  unlike 
Swinburne's,  my  paganism  never  blasphemes.  "  Prince 
Jesus,  set  me  free,"  is  my  prayer.  A  drop  of  blood  slowly 
drips  from  the  wounded  head.  I  am  free. 

"  O  sweet  Lord  Spring,  I  am  free  at  last 
To  follow  wherever  thy  feet  have  passed, 
Over  the  dales  and  over  the  rills, 
To  the  gladsome  Grecian  hills." 

The  pagan  note  pervades  the  last  chord  of  Nineveh.  But 
no  philosophy  can  emancipate  us  from  the  Nazarene. 
"  We  are  not,"  as  Chamberlain  remarks,  "  Christians  be 
cause  we  were  brought  up  in  this  or  that  church,  because 
we  want  to  be  Christians;  if  we  are  Christians,  it  is  be 
cause  we  cannot  help  it,  because  neither  the  chaotic  bustle 
of  life,  nor  the  delirium  of  selfishness  nor  artificial  train 
ing  of  thought  can  dispel  the  Vision  of  the  Man  of  Sor 
row  when  once  it  has  been  seen."  In  "  A  New  England 
Ballad  "  I  attempt  to  reconcile  what  is  Greek  and  what  is 
Christian  in  me.  I  was  delighted  when,  years  after,  I 
found  in  Chamberlain  my  philosophic  justification. 


MARGINALIA  125 

"  A  New  England  Ballad  "  is  my  answer  to  Puritan 
ism.  Puritanism  may  have  exhausted  its  force  externally, 
but  the  virus  of  intolerance  still  corrodes  our  minds.  Puri 
tanism  crucified  Whitman  and  slandered  Poe;  its  breath 
is  deadly  to  art.  I  love  Merry  Old  England,  but  for 
New  England,  at  least  in  this  aspect,  I  have  no  affection. 
I  regard  it  as  a  duty  to  my  Germanic  ancestors  to  sup 
ply  an  antidote  to  the  poison  bequeathed  to  us  by  the 
Pilgrim  Fathers. 

"  Barred  in  His  name  the  magic  bower 

Of  mimic  kings  and  queens  that  seem,"  etc. 

Not  only  in  New  England,  but  in  New  York,  theatrical 
presentations  on  the  Sabbath  are,  at  this  writing,  illegal. 

"...   through  a  gate  obscure  and  small 

He  watched  a  pale-faced  stripling  crawl 

Into  a  closely-shuttered  place   ..." 

Though  Shakespeare  be  barred  on  Sunday,  the  peripatetic 
Venus  and  traffickers  in  vice  ply  their  trade  every  day  in 
the  week. 

"  Wearing  the   hunted  look,   uncanny, 
Of  them  that  love  not  much,  but  many." 

"  Her  sins,  which  are  many,  are  forgiven ;  for  she  loved 
much:  but  to  whom  little  is  forgiven,  the  same  loveth 
little"  (Saint  Luke  vi:47).  "  Quia  multum  amavit" — 
there  is  nothing  more  beautiful  in  the  world,  except  one 
sentence  in  "  De  Profundis  " :  "  Where  there  is  sorrow, 
there  is  holy  ground  "  ,  .  . 


126  MARGINALIA 

"  The  sleek,  the  oily  Pharisees 

With  the  complacent  smile  of  yore — 
Dear  God,  how  He  remembered  these !  " 

Garments  are  subject  to  fashion,  but  the  Pharisee  of  to 
day  is  brother  under  his  skin  to  the  Pharisee  of  Jerusalem. 

".    .    .   He 

I  am  who  at  His  mother's  sign, 

And  for  her  glory,  turned  the  water 
In  the  six  water-pots  to  wine!  " 

In  view  of  the  campaign  waged  by  intolerant  females, 
in  favour  of  Prohibition,  the  fact  that  Jesus  performed 
His  first  miracle,  the  turning  of  water  into  wine,  at  the 
request  of  His  mother  (Saint  John  ii:  i-n),  assumes  addi 
tional  pregnance.  Christ's  opinion  of  wine  was  evidently 
as  pronounced  as  His  opinion  of  the  Sabbath.  "  The  Sab 
bath  was  made  for  man,  and  not  man  for  the  Sabbath." 

"  Columbus  has  not  crossed  the  main 
To  open  up  new  worlds  to  pain" 

Small  as  may  be  the  baggage  of  our  immigrants,  they  bring 
with  them  too  often  the  intolerance  and  the  prejudices  of 
the  Old  World.  Here,  as  Professor  Sumner  remarks, 
America  has  missed  her  great  opportunity,  the  opportunity 
of  creating  a  continent  entirely  free  from  prejudice  and 
convention. 

"  The  awful  beauty  of  Apollo, 

The  loving  kindness  which  is  Christ." 

Since  Nietzsche,  every  thinker  has  formulated  his  con 
ception  of  the  Overman.  My  Overman  is  both  Christian 


MARGINALIA  127 

and  pagan.     He  transcends  man,  but  is  still  human.     He 
is  Christ-Apollo. 


THE  PLAINT  OF  EVE 

TF  the  preceding  poem  limns  the  Superman  as  I  see  him, 
this  poem  is  my  tribute  to  the  Superwoman.  "  The 
Plaint  of  Eve  "  crystallizes  poetically  the  culture-history 
of  woman  from  Eve  to  Madame  Curie,  from  Semiramis  to 
Sarah  Bernhardt.  In  "  Aiogyne  "  (see  Nineveh)  I  have 
chronicled  merely  the  legend  of  woman's  passion.  Woman 
to  me  was  primarily  a  creature  of  sex.  "  Aiogyne  "  is 
Old  Testament.  "  The  Plaint  of  Eve  "  is  of  the  twen 
tieth  century.  This  is  the  New  Sanction. 

"  Man's  mate  was  I  in  Paradise  ..." 

Woman  speaks;  after  each  stanza,  like  a  Greek  Chorus, 
man  answers. 

"  The  Son  of  Man  was  Mary's  Son   ..." 

Jesus  was  not  the  Son  of  Man,  in  that  He  had  no  human 
father,  but  He  surely  was  the  Son  of  Woman.  This,  it 
seems  to  me,  is  an  interesting  point  which  has  never  been 
interpreted,  presumably  because  the  fathers  of  the  Church 
and  the  theologians  were  men. 

"  From  the  grey  dawn  when  time  began 
To  the  Crimean  battle-field,"  etc. 

There  were  Florence  Nightingales  before  Florence 
Nightingale. 


128  MARGINALIA 

"  The  shadow  queens  of  Maeterlinck, 
Clothed  with  my  soft  flesh,  cross  the  brink 
Of  utter  unreality." 

Who  shall  ever  tell  how  much  the  Belgian  Shakespeare 
is  indebted  to  his  wife,  the  histrionic  interpreter  of  his 
genius?  Madame  Maeterlinck  is  to  him  what  the  mys 
terious  Mr.  W.  H.  was  to  Shakespeare. 

"  Rautendelein  and  Juliet, 
Who  shall  my  wistful  smile  forget  ?  " 

Fraulein  Eysolt — the  Eysolt,  as  she  is  called  for  short — 
meeting  the  spirit  of  Hauptmann  in  the  mystical  marriage 
of  art,  endowed  Rautendelein,  that  strange  woodland 
sprite,  sister  to  Peter  Pan,  with  unforgettable  glamour. 
The  vitality  of  a  great  actor  entering  into  a  dramatic 
figure  may  give  to  the  creation  of  a  poet's  brain  something 
that  was  not  there  before,  an  indefinable  charm  that  en 
dures  when  the  lips  of  the  actor  himself  are  food  for  the 
rose  and  the  worm. 

The  Juliet  to  whom  I  refer  is  not  Mr.  W.  H.,  but 
Julia  Marlowe. 

"  The  leader  of  my  boyish  band 
I  rule  in  Neverneverland." 

Peter  Pan  owes  more  to  Maude  Adams  than  to  Barrie 
himself. 

"  Hers  is  the  sweetest  voice  of  France, 
And  hers  the  sob  that  like  a  lance 
Has  pierced  the  heart  of  Italy.'1 

Woman  is  preeminent  in  the  histrionic  profession,  which, 
as  Sarah  Bernhardt  remarks  in  her  "Memoirs,"  is  distinctly 


MARGINALIA  129 

a  feminine  vocation.  The  golden  voice  of  Sarah  and  the 
sob  of  Duse  have  no  masculine  parallel. 

"  With  stylus,  brush  and  angelot, 
I  seize  life's  pulses,  fierce  and  hot." 

In  sculpture,  in  painting,  and  in  music  woman's  con 
tribution,  if  small  in  volume,  is  distinctive  in  quality. 

"  In  Greece,  a  suzerain  of  song  ..." 

The  voice  of  Catullus  himself  was  not  sweeter  than  Sappho's. 
Swinburne,  by  no  means  a  feminist,  reverently  acclaims 
the  Lesbian  the  "  supreme  head  of  song."  From  Sappho 
to  Mrs.  Browning  there  is  a  long  step,  yet  who  can  doubt 
that  Mrs.  Browning's  "  Sonnets  from  the  Portuguese " 
compare  in  quality  with  Shakespeare's  "  '  sugared  '  Son 
nets"? 

"  Strong  to  inspire,  strong  to  please 
My  love  was  unto  Pericles ; 
The  Corsican,"  etc. 

Pericles  without  Aspasia  is  unthinkable.  Napoleon  feared 
Madame  de  Stael  more  than  the  Holy  Alliance.  His  let 
ter  and  instructions  with  regard  to  this  curious  woman 
point  to  a  personal  animosity  which  he  could  hardly  have 
felt  for  an  intellectual  inferior.  As  late  as  October  21, 
1816,  in  Saint  Helena,  Napoleon  paid  this  grudging  tribute 
to  his  staunchest  feminine  adversary :  "  After  all  is  said  and 
done,  Madame  de  Stael  is  a  woman  of  great  talent;  very 
distinguished,  of  very  keen  intelligence;  she  has  won  her 
place.  It  might  be  said  if,  instead  of  carping  at  me,  she 
had  taken  my  side,  it  would  have  been  useful  to  me." 


130  MARGINALIA 

"  The  number  and  its  secret  train 
Eluded  not  my  restless  brain. 
Beyond  the  ken  of  man  I  saw, 
With  Colon's  eyes,  America." 

Isabella,  almost  alone  among  her  contemporaries,  male 
and  female,  was  endowed  with  sufficient  insight  and  sym 
pathy  to  grasp  the  immensity  of  Columbus  and  of  his 
vision.  The  science  of  abstract  numbers  is  indebted  to 
Sonya  Kovalevsky,  who  held  the  chair  of  mathematics  at 
Upsala. 

".    .    .   to  me 
The  atom  bared  its  perfect  plot." 

The  most  monumental  discovery  of  modern  times,  which 
has  revolutionized  our  conception  of  the  structure  of 
matter,  was,  at  least,  shared  by  a  woman.  The  French 
Academy  may  withhold  its  laurels  from  Madame  Curie ; — 
can  we? 

"What  was  my  guerdon,  mine  to  take? 
A  crown  of  slander,  and  the  stake!  " 

From  Cleopatra  to  Maria  Theresa,  from  Catherine  the 
Great  to  Elizabeth,  slander  was  woman's  chiefest  reward 
for  her  stewardship  of  nations,  while  both  slander  and  the 
stake  were  the  guerdon  of  Joan  of  Arc. 

"  Back  from  my  aspiration  hurled, 
I  was  the  harlot  of  the  world,"  etc. 

One  stanza  here  exhausts  what  takes  up  my  entire  atten 
tion  in  my  earlier  portrait  of  the  Eternal  Woman  as  she 


MARGINALIA  131 

stalks  through  time.  The  point  of  view  is  completely 
reversed.  I  have  discovered  my  Social  Conscience  .  .  . 

"  New  creeds  unto  the  world  I  gave, 
But  my  own  self  I  could  not  save." 

This  seems  to  be  the  common  characteristic  of  all  Messiahs, 
male  and  female,  from  Jesus  to  Mrs.  Eddy. 

"  Shall  my  long  road  to  Calvary, 

And  man's  injustice,  have  no  end?  " 

The  Son  of  Mary  died  for  all  Mankind,  not  for  mankind 
alone.  Must  we  wait  for  a  female  Christ  to  be  nailed 
to  the  Cross  for  the  delivery  of  Woman? 


Finis 


THIS  BOOK  IS  DUE  ON  THE  LAST  DATE 
STAMPED  BELOW 


AN  INITIAL  FINE  OF  25  CENTS 

WILL  BE  ASSESSED  FOR  FAILURE  TO  RETURN 
THIS  BOOK  ON  THE  DATE  DUE.  THE  PENALTY 
WILL  INCREASE  TO  5O  CENTS  ON  THE  FOURTH 
DAY  AND  TO  $t.OO  ON  THE  SEVENTH  DAY 
OVERDUE. 


MAR  13  1934 

, 

MAR  19  lot* 

.    .          'i/ifo 

<-»rn»  ^ft  1940 

SEP  lo  »** 

ftrtHl 

m^1^ 

f 

i 

LD  21-100m-7,'33 

,'i 


UNIVERSZTY  OF  CALIFORMA  LIBRARY 


